Whitechapel - ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Horrible Warning Si — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:20:08 -0700

...running late, running late...

Bring us your ontological queries. Bring us your relationship problems and the courage to be laughed at. Bring us your need to know that word, y’know the one, it’s on the tip of your tongue, what the fuck is that word, oh god oh god.
Bring us your yearning for solutions to mathematical dilemmas, beer-related uncertainties, genitalia-piercing indecision and demands for perspective. Bring us embarrassing questions regarding the removal of blunt objects from nether regions – it’s for a friend, honest – and bring us probing global challenges about How Those Other Guys Live.

Bring us research enquiries, cultural quandaries, opinion-baiting on relevant world events and Shit You’ve Always Wondered About.

Ask Whitechapel – anything.

And Whitechapellers? Be a brick and answer back, eh?

INSTRUCTIONS:

When posing a question, be sure and include a representative #hashtag. When answering a question, head your answer with the same tag.

An example:

Q. What is the true nature of the threat posed by the #UrethralAttackMaggots?

A. #UrethralAttackMaggots.
Horror, horror, only horror, pure horror, unmitigated horror, constant and endless horror, for those who Fail To Follow Instructions.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Orpheus — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 18:04:20 -0700

NEW QUESTION: #ThatFreakingSciFiMovie

I'm trying to find a Science Fiction movie from about twenty years back. I watched half an hour of it on TV and hazily read parts of a Wikipedia article.

MAIN THEMES:
Group of people stuck in Virtual Reality
Artificial Inelegance views the people
Intelligence does not understand the groups actions in one way or another

MEMERABLE CHARECTAR ACTIONS:
Lead character kills members of the group to escape the Intelligence
Lead and remaining character is placed in some form of gel bubble to prevent harm

EDIT/ADDITIONS;
It had recurring panels that had inconsequential significance BUT are a form of obsolete mechanical/electronic alphabet. I cant find the name of it, but the coding is a vertical line of one to five(ish) dots, each line a different letter and stacked across to make a word or sentence. Something like this:

I SWEAR TO GOD THIS EXISTS. Trying to find it is driving me crazy. No joke. Nights of sleep have been lost.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Beamish — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 18:44:21 -0700

#TFSFM

Need more to go on, high or low quality?

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Soviet Rocket No. 9 — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 18:47:04 -0700

NEW Question:#Changing Career. Though this might belong more in the "Open Mic" Thread. Personal thing going on.

So after five years of college, I FUCKING hate my degree. I told my mother before I graduated, that it felt like the girlfriend I haven't broken up with yet.

She responded with the usual, "Well shit happens, I don't know what to do. So just enjoy the rest of your pitiful life."

"Really, woman-who-gave-birth-to-me?"

"Whatever maggot spawn. This is too personal and deep, and I'm not in the bloody mood. So let it sit like another elephant between us."

Then after months of not nailing anything down, I decided to try and change my life. The main bulk of this is: I want to be creative. I like see oddities on Whitechapel, hearing strange noises that Warren's found, and love seeing what other fellow whitechaplers do for a living. I am by no means an artist, tried to do art in college and only got by because my then-girlfriend helped me. I love film. When I was in Art I, I was given a project to watch certain artistic directors, and instantly fell in love with Stanley Kubrick. I collected films (before monetary reasons stopped that), go to imdb all the time, analyze movies I've seen, I am obsessed with that magic medium. My aunt suggested that I could go back and get a master's in film, or do marketing.

But, the family sees no future in it. While others create their dreams, I am left with something else. The very thought of not being creative in the future, leaves me in a dark despair of not wanting to go on. I want validation from my mother (the no.1 person in my life, who trust as a guide), but I can't seem to get through to her brain, and speak to her as a human being.

As of now: I work for eight dollars an hour Monday through Wednesday,and on Thursdays and Fridays I work for free at a US Senator's office, and have given up on the idea of being a lawyer.

I don't what I need from you Whitechapel. Words of encouragement are good, but how have you lot done with something like this in your lives? If so, please share.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Orpheus — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 19:20:37 -0700

@Beamish #TFSFM

Half decent budget i think, a step or two above the 'cult classic'. At least for anything made twenty odd years ago.

Another odd thing i remember about it. It had recurring panels that had inconsequential significance BUT are a form of obsolete omechanical/electronic alphabet. I cant find the name of it, but the coding is a vertical line of one to five(ish) dots, each line a different letter and stacked across to make a word or sentence. Something like this:

EDIT: Added to original question

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Beamish — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 19:39:22 -0700

#TFSFM

Lawnmower Man?

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Flabyo — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:52:52 -0700

#TFSFM

Ask here, someone in the TV Tropes Hive Mind will probably know it.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Kosmopolit — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 01:13:45 -0700

#TFSFM

It sounds very much like an adaptation of Harlan Ellison's "I Have No mouth and I must Scream".

But according to Wikipedia while IHNMBIMS has been adapted into a radio play; a comci and an audio-book it's never been done as a movie.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Orpheus — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 17:57:08 -0700

#TFSFM

@Kosmopolit YES. Exactly right. 'I Have No mouth and I must Scream'.

But there was no such movie... That is strange... Uhhhh... I think that this is a case of fabricated memory...?
Come to think of it, I was trying to find this after thinking of and trying to rediscover similar Science Fiction movies. Most notably eXistenZ.

Either way, thank you Whitechapel!

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Kosmopolit — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 18:25:54 -0700

It initially reminded me of Cube - except in that the code was different and they were in a real not simulated prison.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

DavidLejeune — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 21:32:55 -0700

#TFSFM

There was a video game adaption of IHNMBIMS. IIRC it was very FMV heavy, being released in the early days of the CD-ROM. You may have played it (or seen someone else play it) and your brain transmogrified it into a movie.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Warped Savant — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 06:52:46 -0700

Kosmopolit -- Cube was the first thing I thought of too but I could tell that wasn't it.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

sellmeyoursoul — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 07:46:35 -0700

#ChangingCarreer @SovRock I have a lot of friends in the film industry and you'd pretty much have to be willing to start at the bottom. That means unpaid intern/minimum wage abuse monkey. Expect long hours and low pay for quite a while. Also, depending on where you are, your opportunities are probably pretty limited.

The good news, if you're a good little slave, it is a very incestuous industry where people hire their friends, so eventually, you can get some pretty steady work (still obscenely long hours). If you last long enough, and that's really the key to success, you can make some good money. But you need to make sure you're setting some aside since it is also not unheard of to go months between jobs in the lean times. Also, unless you're in a union, you won't get insurance or any sort of retirement benefits, so you'll need to budget for that.

Really, it's best to know what in the industry you want to do so you can try and target jobs that work toward that (at first, you'll have to take what you can get just to meet people). Of course working as a PA allows you to see a lot of what's going on and that might help you decide.

If your city has a film office, you might try and find work there since that's one of the places out of town productions will go to find workers.

I'd need to know more about what specifically you want to do to know if there is any actual help I can provide. Feel free to e-mail me at mike@.com I might be able to put you in touch with people who actually do whatever, who can provide better advice.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Horrible Warning Si — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 08:25:21 -0700

New question, under the awkward tag: #NaziScience

For story purposes, I need some quasi-convincing Science gubbins in which a bunch of Neo-Nazis develop a chemical/genetic/allele/blood/whatever-test, in order to determine a person's "Jewishness"...

Before you say: I know, I know, that's broadly a meaningless distinction in any biological sense. I'm simply wondering if (as with other communities which have historically maintained close-knit exclusivity-of-marriage ideals) there are any chemical markers, alleles, phenotypes, whatever, which would tend to suggest ancestral descent from this or that Jewish primogenitor family. (As nebulous a concept as that is.) Even if the science has been summarily disproven (in fact, it's even better for story purposes if it *has* been discredited), has any such test ever been proposed? What would said NeoNazis be looking for?

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

RenThing — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 08:59:13 -0700

#NaziScience

Only on WC would I be answering this kind of hashtag...

I know that particular groups of individuals have very specific genetic markers. For instance I recently had my own genetic work-up did and they were able to identify that my father's background came from a very small subset of genes based largely out of the Balkans. I don't know if people of particular Jewish backgrounds have similar genetic markers but there you go.

If you want a study that is both easily disproven and even ridiculous you could go with a take on the "measuring physical features to determine X about a person", like how they used to try to measure various dimensions of the head and face for criminal tendencies, and combine it with stereotypical physical traits that Jews are supposed to have.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Solario — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:04:30 -0700

#NaziScience

Far as I know, not even a pseudoscience has come up with a proposal for a 100% sure fire way of determining "Jewishness". Robert Pollack, a biologist, wrote an article on the overall idea called The Fallacy of Biological Judaism - http://www.forward.com/articles/9406/
The ideas were popularized early by people like Linné (Linaeus in Latin) and Cuvier, but as far as genetic testing for racial commonalities I don't really know any.

If anyone can read Gothic German, maybe take a gander at Ludwig Clauss' "Rasse Und Seele" (Race and Soul) that was used as a textbook for differntiating between the "races". That could have some references to weird biological and genetic markers.
http://www.archive.org/details/Clauss-Ludwig-Rasse-und-Seele

(I only had one semester of Science History so we never really covered this. I can tell you a bit about Cuvier and Linné, if you want. I'd say, you should ask a biologist, but as mentioned - there's no genetic commonality that's exclusive for as wide-spread a culture as Judaism, so you'd need to talk to someone who was specifically interested in biology's historical context more than actual, current biology.)

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

sellmeyoursoul — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:13:23 -0700

#NaziScience - Si, while it's not for 100% of all Jews, the Cohen modal haplotype would get you a subset.

Not that I've ever used that knowledge for similar story purposes or anything.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Solario — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:22:31 -0700

#NaziScience

If you want to, you could probably combine the Cohen modal haplotype with a little of Francis Galton (founder of eugenics) and Joseph Jacobs' (a Jewish scientist) composite photograph of a "Jewish Type" along with the idea of gemmules (1800's pseudo-science idea of hereditary abilities carried in the bloodstream).

http://books.google.com/books?id=UeiMt7Yzb1MC&pg=PA100&lpg=PA100&dq=Francis+Galton+jewish+boys&source=bl&ots=Hj6o5LrTjj&sig=R4e5tBliXpezKQhnX2hgG1YGwjg&hl=en&ei=S-QBSo7oBpbisgOluOz8BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=Francis%20Galton%20jewish%20boys&f=false
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Sqwrln — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:25:37 -0700

#NaziScience

Yo, Alex here.

Perhaps you could play with Tay-Sachs disease: Wikipedia (which has some genetic basis of which I know nothing).

Two semi-random links:
Big list of Pubmed articles
One possibly useful abstract

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Aurora Borealis — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 20:34:16 -0700

Does anyone here perhaps know a good (and FREE) program for making #screenshots?

I know I can press Print Screen and then paste the thing into Paint or somesuch but it's such a tedious and slow process when you have to do tons of these.

I'll be grabbing lots of reference pics for locations off various youtube vids, old movies, wiki articles, ebooks (pics + text), things in flash etc. for my future comics (not for tracing though!) so I need something that's swift and effective, preferably just grabs whatever I "print screen" and save it to a folder with time + date.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

BrianMowrey — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 21:22:59 -0700

#screenshots

if you mean PC, you should have irfanview

you have to open it and press C to open the screenshots menu, but then you can just leave it minimized and hot-key screenshots to a folder. It also is very good at quick repetitive resizing and moving actions. I guess there might be more automated stuff for some of what it does, but it does a lot of things.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Aurora Borealis — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 22:03:52 -0700

@BrianMowrey

Ohh yeah, thanks! Yep, pc indeed. See, I didn't know Irfanview had that option, otherwise I'd grab it ages ago. Tested it and it works perfectly (set the key as Alt + Num 0, just so I don't end up doing weird wrist twisters while trying to hit both keys with one hand, heh). So thanks again :)

#screenshots solved :D

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

RandomEntity — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 09:42:21 -0700

@Soviet Rocket
#changing careers
Going through a similar thing. about to move to LA {will post more in the spleen venting thread}. I've been unemployed for over a year, feeling pretty hopeless, moving to LA for a shot at getting a job in a VFX/post-production studio. I know that I'll probably end up working a shitty job full time and then interning for free to start out, but I want to work in film and television so this is what I have to do. I think I know what you're feeling, and really, it may be the stupid answer, but it's the right one for your heart, soul and peace of mind.

So onto my question, anyone know of any #jobsinLA?

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Rachæl Tyrell — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 22:33:33 -0700

New Question: #Disabilty&Income

So. I'm on Disability in the US. I need this Disability because I am incapable of keeping a full time job or being able to support myself, especially since one does not get health coverage in the US without having a full time job, or likes to bleed money. I need some spine surgery and eye surgery and maybe some brain sorting, so the health coverage is KEY. That being said, I'd like to imagine that I could eventually find a way to work creatively to the point that I could support myself, because living on the dole sucks. I want to know how I could legally arrange my finances into some kind of LLC or other corporate entity so that I could do things like photograph events from time to time, but use that money to feed the ever draining costs of artistic supplies, website fees, computer parts, etc. I'm not trying to be sheisty here, I've done the math and I really don't think I've ever broken even, if I compare artistic income against cameras, computers, godaddy fees, transport, etc.

So. How can I start a corporate entity for myself without giving myself anything that resembles an income that would screw up my SSDI / SSI ?

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

oldhat — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 11:09:11 -0700

New question: #cleaningapiercing

So I just got my ears pierced for the first time today and was given some studs to wear for a little while before buying some others to put on. Now...the lady told me to clean it with alcohol every day, but I forgot to ask for elaboration. Do I take the earring out and clean it or just clean the area?

Any help is appreciated!

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Rachæl Tyrell — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 11:19:27 -0700

#cleaningapeircing

Alcohol?! No no no no no. Use Bacitracin, or neosporin, or something that won't just dry the fuck out of it. Don't take the piercing out, but do rotate it. Beware of hair getting wrapped around the post.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

nelzbub — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 12:47:22 -0700

I was always told that a salt water solution was best for keeping piercings clean as they heal.
association of professional piercers
sound advice to be found here.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

RandomEntity — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 13:11:31 -0700

#cleaningapiercing
@nelzbub hit the nail on the head. A saline solution is the best thing. H2Ocean is a great product that matches the bodies own saline level. 1/4 teaspoon of sea salt to 8 oz of warm water, soak for about 15-20 minutes twice a day. As someone who has had many piercings this is the best thing for them. My first piercing was a labret,and the dumb bitch who was supposed to be a professional, that did it A: told me to use a watered down hydrogen peroxide solution and B: gave me an extra long stud. The two things combined ate away the gum around my two bottom teeth. Since peroxide destroys healing tissue.
@oldhat how were they pierced? By gun or by needle?

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Jason A. Quest — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 13:45:09 -0700

I'm, not a fan of antibiotics as a just-in-case solution, not when there are other ways of killing bacteria. I've always used alcohol or salt water.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

dorkmuffin — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 14:19:01 -0700

#CleaningPiercings

NEOSPORIN BAD!!

Okay so Neosporin just traps the moisture in there and since it's an antibacterial ointment, it also breeds little superbacteria if you don't use it all day every day. Also, if you look on the tubes of antibacterial ointment, it always says "not for use on puncture wounds.

Seconding the H2Ocean, but also adding:

Dr. Bronner's soap. It's INCREDIBLY gentle. Other non-comodogenic cleansers are also good, but I just like Dr. Bronner's.

DO NOT TAKE OUT THE EARRING FOR AT LEAST 3 WEEKS. PREFERABLY 6.

- Girl with 10 piercings.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Rachæl Tyrell — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 14:40:03 -0700

@Dorkmuffin -

Really? Neosporin is bad? Huh. I know that when I got my piercings, Bacitracin was always the go-to ointment recommended, but maybe that's changed?

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Argos — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 14:40:43 -0700

#piercings

Sea salt soaks are your friend. At least once, if not twice a day, dissolve 1/4 tbsp of non-iodized sea salt in warm water (as warm as you can stand without burning yourself) and soak your piercing in it for 5-10 minutes, and wipe the crusties away with a paper towel, NOT a q-tip since the cotton fuzz stays behind sometimes. Ears can be awkward to soak sometimes but just lay your head down over a mug and that should do the trick.

As said, H2Ocean also works, and a gentle soap cleanser (NOT an antibacterial one, though antimicrobial is fine) in the shower, like DorkMuffin said, works too.

Oh hey I just scrolled up and realized that randomentity said the same thing I did. Well, there you go. Srsly, warm saline soaks.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Argos — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 14:43:03 -0700

@Rachael - yeah, neosporin is bad because it's a thick goop that traps in moisture and doesn't let the piercing breathe. I'm not sure what Bacitracin is, but it's a cream that can be rubbed in they're usually okay, it's just the thick goopy ones that feel like vaseline are real bad.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

glukkake — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 14:47:47 -0700

#cleaningapiercing

What they all said. In fact, when I get any piercings these days I don't even do anything. I don't touch it, don't soak it, don't move it. I leave it the hell alone. I come from not wanting to get the crusties off myself, as I'll generally just end up moving the jewelry and getting it into the hole, which can scratch one's soft innards and cause complications with healing. I do take ridiculously hot showers though and make sure to give it a good spray & soak with my hands. Usually just the water pressure from a good shower head combined with ridiculously hot water will clear everything away.
But for the love of god, never use neosporin, peroxide, bacitracin or anything similar as they all eat up healthy tissues and dry it out. If you think you have an infection, I recommend tea tree oil - which you can cut with vitamin e oil if it's too harsh on your skin - since it does not destroy healthy tissues. Sea salt soaks are also good if they're a little weepy, since they should clear anything out without drying it too badly.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Rachæl Tyrell — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 14:50:24 -0700

#cleaningapeircing

Christ, I guess I'm lucky I'm not covered in pussy blister scars.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

RandomEntity — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 15:21:12 -0700

Dammit now I REALLY want a new piercing! Currently stretching my 1/2" lobe to 5/8"
Also I never want to read "pussy blister scars" ever again.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

BrianMowrey — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 06:52:31 -0700

In that, the context of the discussion ruined the phrase for you?

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

RandomEntity — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 08:13:00 -0700

I didn't read "pussy" as a form of "pus" the first time I read it. DO NOT WANT.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

keyofsilence — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 08:20:16 -0700

New question: #AvoidingProcrastination

When you need to put some time aside for something important (be it creative or professional), how do you go about not squandering that time? I find myself slowly becoming a professional procrastinator. Professionally I'm fine (for the most part), but when I sit down and try to exercise a little creativity I just seem to use the time I've set aside to dick around and do other things. Do any of you have particular techniques that help?

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Jason A. Quest — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 10:49:45 -0700

#AvoidingProcrastination

I do two things. First, I set time aside every day to Do The Work, so it becomes a habit. (Not that I successfully use it every day, but as a rule.) Second, I report on my progress every time, which makes me accountable for it. This is a technique I got started doing on the old Panel & Pixel web site, and now I do it on SequentialWorkshop.com, which has a thread dedicated to that purpose. My productivity has "soared" from getting-nothing-whatsoever–done to slowly-getting-some-stuff-done. :)

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

oldhat — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 11:05:26 -0700

#cleaningapiercing

Thank you folks SO much for your help! In the end I went with a saline solution. Until I'm able to go to the pharmacy and get some H2Ocean I'm using the non-iodized sea salt method. And this guide that was linked above said it was okay to use a paper towel dipped in the mixture instead of dipping my ear in a cup (really hard to do).

@randomentity: By gun.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Ryan S Thomason — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 13:31:56 -0700

#cleaning apiercing

I'd back up the salt water, however I'd also say that if it feels like it's taking forever to heal, whack some surgical spirit on there - it'll sting like hell but it toughens the skin and speeds things up

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Argos — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 13:59:47 -0700

#cleaningapiercing

@oldhat

er, um...go to a piercer next time. I don't want to go on a lecture here or freak you out, but it needs to be said: Piercing via gun isn't the best thing to do to your body. For one, the people who pierce with guns don't have proper training (which is why she told you to use alcohol, which is a big no-no). Also, they can't always get the placement *quite* perfectly, whereas professional piercers do their best, marking and remarking the spot, to make sure everything looks spot on. As for healing, if it's a cartilage piercing, guns can cause some trauma to cartilage sometimes, and since they just stab you with the earring instead of a needle, the skin gets a bit roughed up, whereas needles make really clean, smooth holes. Lastly, and most importantly, professional piercers sterilize all their equipment by putting it in an autoclave, and will use sterile, one time use needles, while guns can't reach that same level of cleanliness (they can be sanitized, but not sterilized).

Anyway, your piercing really should be fine, but it might be a little extra angry for a while, for the reasons I've listed. You'll have an easier time healing, if you get any more piercings, if you have a professional do it with a needle instead.

Also, did you get your lobes pierced or cartilage? Cos cartilage can take up to 6-12 months for complete healing (though initial healing is faster). So if it's a cartilage piercing and you find it's still being finicky in a couple months, don't freak out, that's just how those piercings roll. Lobes, on the other hand, are super easy to heal, and you'll be fine in no time. Just keep up the saline soaks to help it along.

Edit: one more thing! Should misfortune befall you and the piercing gets infected, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT remove the piercing, lest your skin heal and the hole shut before the infection is gone, creating an abcess. Leave the jewelry in and continue soaking as normal (or more often, if needed), so that the pus can drain. As glukkake said, tea tree oil is awesome for piercings, because it's an antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, and antomicrobial, but doesn't totally dry out your skin. I was fine using it on it's own but if you have sensitive skin, dilute it with another oil (lavender is nice bc it's a natural anti-inflammatory, if you wanna get fancy). Protip: tea tree oil also helps with breakouts, for the same reasons.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

oldhat — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 14:15:09 -0700

#cleaningapiercing

@argos Good advice and I'll be sure to take it next time. I guess ignorance got the better of me.

And it's a lobe piercing.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Argos — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 14:19:20 -0700

no worries, when I wanted to get my lobes repierced I almost did it by gun, too. Luckily when I got interested in other, more extreme, piercings (I wanted surface piercings at one point but never got them) other people pointed me in the right direction, and I learned about how bad guns are. Also, check my edit if you missed it, I just added it :)

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allana — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 15:07:59 -0700

Argos nailed it. A few things are subjective (salt soaks don't work for everyone, especially if you're over-salting the water, which is pretty common) but everything else is spot-on.

I'd actually go a step further in the DON'T-GET-A-FUCKING-GUN-PIERCING lecture: If you're ever planning on stretching your piercings, I'd recommend you take out the gun piercings right away and get re-pierced wtih a needle. Guns create the potential for way more scar tissue, which is going to severely restrict and pain you if you ever want to up-gauge.

Since we're in Toronto and all, I'd suggest you go to a piercing shop and buy some Sea Salt Spray or a similar product. New Tribe and all the other Queen St places will have it, and will talk to you about when and how much you should use. It's a spray, which is way better than dipping your earlobe (ugh, ever tried dripping a nipple piercing? I repeat, ugh) and it has, I think, neem oil in it.

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RandomEntity — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 16:29:33 -0700

#cleaningapiercing I decided not to go into the gun vs professional needle piercing debate because I sound like a complete condescending douchebag to most people when I do.
In short, piercing guns are the fucking devil. I have had over a dozen piercings, including 2 failed surface piercings and I've been my piercer's guinea pig for all kinds of weird industrials and seeing how far we can go with things like piercing my lobe and seeing how far we can stretch it right after. I've considered apprenticeship but I've never had the money.

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oldhat — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 16:39:12 -0700

Okay, I feel like a proper idiot now.

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Argos — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 16:48:46 -0700

awww, that's what I wanted to avoid :( It's okay Oldhat, you just didn't know, and not everyone does. In fact pretty much anyone who's not in the body mod community doesn't know. Like I said, since it's just lobe piercings, you should be fine, they'll just be a little extra sore at first because the piercing won't have been as smooth as if done with a needle. Though if you DO want to stretch them, allana is right, get them redone. One way around this is to just get them scalpelled, but that only works if you're stretching to about 1-1.5" max, since scalpelling eventually leads to having thinned out lobes instead of evenly stretched lobes. But again, that's at really big sizes, so if you're only stretching to say, a 0 gauge, you'll be okay.

@randomentity I considered an apprenticeship as well, and am still kinda interested. But I kept hearing about how hard it is to get one and there are so many good piercers in SD already, I'm not sure that more piercers are really in demand. It seemed like a job I would love, just not a job that I was confident in actually securing. Ah, well.

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Greasemonkey — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 17:55:30 -0700

New question: #winterblues

The winter season is kicking off in Canada; short days, overcast skies most of the time. Predictions are mostly for a long cold one this year. I didn't fare too badly last year with the dreaded winter depression, but had about three or four days when I felt like jumping off the balcony (which two people in our block - to my knowledge - have already done this year) after weeks of not seeing the sun. I've read in various places about daylight bulbs you can install, which are supposed to stave off winter depression by supplying something like the normal sunlight spectrum, but apparently they're expensive and don't work terribly well. I'd prefer not to resort to the traditional Canadian remedy of drinking heavily throughout the cold months, so I'm looking for something less detrimental to one's health. Any suggestions?

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Warped Savant — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 18:15:01 -0700

Oldhat -- Ignore what they're saying about not using a gun on a lobe piercing. Yes, the people might not be as well trained as they should be, they may tell you the incorrect information (as would be your situation), and the two piercings might be a little bit off from each other. But guess what... your earlobes aren't the exact same as each other anyway. The studs they pierced you with were most likely in a sealed unit so they're clean and, so long as they were in a sealed unit, the gun would have been perfectly clean. They're designed that way otherwise there would be diseases and bacteria being spread every time someone gets their 6 month old daughters ears pierced. My wife has 7 piercings in each ear, ~~most~~ all by gun, including the ones she got down in her cartilage (which is now illegal up here in Canada due to the possibility of shattering the cartilage), and she's never had any problems with them.
You're not an idiot. You did exactly what 99% of people do the first time they get their ears done.

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dorkmuffin — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 18:49:46 -0700

@Oldhat, I got my lobe piercings done with a gun. In retrospect, not the best idea, but it's still mostly fine.

Now you know better!!

I also got cartilage pierced by gun at one point. It was stupid but my ear was fine. What was bad was that I didn't get proper after-care instructions and tried to change the piercing too soon and ended up having to let it close up.

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Jason A. Quest — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 18:51:38 -0700

#winterblues

I live in Michigan, which is Canada Lite. One thing I do is to ignore the switch away from Daylight Saving Time. Not that Daylight Time vs. Standard Time is right or wrong, but the switch is an adjustment that throws me off. So when the time changes, I adjust my alarm and bedtime too, so I'm still going to sleep and waking up at the same physical time as the week before. I also have a few inside lights (not special daylight-spectrum, just lights) on a timer that sort-of simulates a 6am sunrise and 9pm sunset in my apartment. Sure, if I look outdoors I see that it's still/already dark, but inside it's bright and I can pretend that it's not grim outside.

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oldhat — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 19:22:36 -0700

#cleaningapiercing okay, feel less like an idiot, but it's clearly something I should have looked in to a bit more. On Allana's advice I'll go to a piercing shop on Queen and pick up a spray and talk to them about it. Also, I'm not planning on stretching my piercings, so I'm not terribly worried about that so much. But any future piercings I do decide to have I'll be sure to go to a piercing place that doesn't use a gun.

#winterblues I hear that Saint John's Wort can help seasonal depression. I don't use it but have several friends who swear by it.

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trini_naenae — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 19:25:44 -0700

#winterblues

I live in the northern tip of Wisconsin, and one of the neighbors is a former DON (Dean of Nursing), who used to get winter blues, as you call them. I'll have to ask her what light bulbs she uses in the winter. However, one of the causes of seasonal depression is lack of vitamin D. Not enough sun, body doesn't make enough vitamin D, etc etc. That said, what you really need to take is Vitamin D3. If you just take Vitamin D most of it will just go through the system and not do any good. Take at least 1,000 IU.

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Greasemonkey — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 20:00:24 -0700

Thanks, I'll look into all those suggestions.

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taphead — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 20:12:42 -0700

#winterblues

Ah yes, the Soul Death Season is upon us, I hope y'all like grey-on-grey-on-black. I don't know if you're stuck indoors with a 9-to-5 leaving you with going to work before the sun is up and coming home when the sun is already down, but it's a good idea to try and get a bit of light during the day. You know, a walk at lunchtime or somesuch. (I'm horrible at waking up before noon, so this tends to be a bit of a problem for me, but I got one of those fancy daylight spectrum lights as a present and yes, they are pretty awesome the price tag notwithstanding...)

I also feel this is the season for candles, and they do wonders for some reason.

Good luck. This is getting worse by the year for me.

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trini_naenae — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 20:23:37 -0700

@taphead: Would you ever move to another country, even just for part of the year? Aside from the winter, I know I could never live that far north.

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Steerpike — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 20:34:32 -0700

#winterblues

@oldhat: Might be a question of which St. John's wort product - in the US herbal supplements are ridiculously underregulated, so they're a crap shoot, as I found when I tried St. John's Wort from GNC for regular depression. Don't know if that's true for Canada as well.

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taphead — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 20:41:26 -0700

#winterblues

@trini_nanae - I've been mulling that over, yeah. I suppose there should be some sort of a WEB THINGY (tm) for people who want to, say, swap apartments for a few months, and I'd be happy to let someone get a feel of what winter is like here, in exchange for warmer and sunnier climes myself...

(Also, as the work situation went a bit pear-shaped and not having a relationship anchoring me to Finland, moving has suddenly become even more realistic an option. I've never lived abroad apart from the 6 months I did in Dublin on two work-related jaunts, and it is something I'd like to do. But we'll see...)

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taphead — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 20:43:19 -0700

In fact...

#apartmentswap

Has anyone here heard of (or, heaven forfend, actually USED) some sort of system for swapping apartments for a few months, internationally? I'm looking to relocate somewhere sunnier for the winter, and I suppose there has to be someone who'd enjoy this season up here in Finland.

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Warped Savant — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 23:26:53 -0700

#winterblues -- I'm with the people that are suggesting vitamin D. I know a decent amount of people that suffer from S.A.D. that have tried various things, most say that the daylight lightbulbs did nothing (yes, they did use the right ones), some tried a few different natural medicines (a couple of them liked specific ones but none of them liked the same as any of the others), all but one (that I can think of) say that vitamin D works the best and usually, but not always, helps them.

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Flabyo — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:46:27 -0700

#winterblues

The trick with those 'natural daylight' lamps is you use it in the morning to wake up, you *don't* use it in the evenings. A normal day does not have that kind of light at it's end, only it's beginning, so sticking a 'daybreak blue' light in your face in the evening just confuses your bodyclock even more than having to get up in the dark does.

Some recent new science shows we have a third receptor cell type in the eye that has little to do with vision that responds to a particular frequency of blue light, and it uses this to set your body clock each day.

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Kosmopolit — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 01:35:08 -0700

# Winterblues - provided you get a fair number of clear days spending aroudn 10 minutes a day just looking at the sky can make a signficant difference.

Bascially blue-tinged light tells body systems its morning and time to get going, red- or yellow-tinged light tells your body its tiem to get red for bed.

Try gettign a pair of blue-tinged sunglasses and wearing them in the morning. Get a red night light and use it for a few minutes at least before bed.

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Jason A. Quest — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 07:40:23 -0700

"A normal day does not have that kind of light at it's end, only it's beginning"

The light at sunrise and the light at sunset are indistinguishable. The two times of day feel different, but they look the same.

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Flabyo — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 09:48:22 -0700

There's less of this particular frequency of blue. It's pretty narrow apparently, you wouldn't visually be able to tell, you have to get the lab equipment out.

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Jason A. Quest — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 09:53:04 -0700

How is this frequency of blue filtered out when the sunlight is coming from the left, but not when the sunlight is coming from the right?

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Flabyo — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:20:26 -0700

It's more to do with what's in the atmosphere etc... But to be honest what I really meant was that it's not meant to be light in the evenings, and that a normal house bulb *doesn't* have this blue in it so doesn't cock up the body clock like using one of these natural light ones does if you use it in the evening.

Apparently someone is developing a bulb that changes it's frequency output gradually during the day.

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Argos — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:44:59 -0700

It has to do with the way different wave lengths are refracted by the atmosphere and the curvature of the earth. Different light frequencies appear at dawn and disappear in the evening at different times, depending on how far the sun has risen or set. When the sun sets, red disappears first, and so on towards purple, which disappears last. In the morning when the sun is rising, it's the reverse. Purple, blue, and green appear first, and then yellow and orange and red as the sun finishes rising.

Anyway, I haven't heard anything about this special frequency of blue that doesn't exist at night, but I've heard that the above explanation is why green flashes occur, so I'm throwing the info out in the case that it might apply here.

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Rachæl Tyrell — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:09:31 -0700

"The light at sunrise and the light at sunset are indistinguishable. The two times of day feel different, but they look the same."

I don't know where you live, but this is certainly not the case anywhere I've ever experienced, nor is it the case according to any art / color theory I've ever encountered.

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Jason A. Quest — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:14:37 -0700

It's not a question of color theory, but of physics. It may not match our intuition or the way we experience them (i.e. we rarely sit down to watch a sunrise), but sunset and sunrise are exactly the same physical phenomena (light getting filtered thru a mass of air at a changing angle)... but with one happening in the opposite order of the other. As Argos describes, a sunrise played in reverse goes thru the same process as a sunset. On a given day sunrise will usually be colder than sunset, so that can affect the atmospherics (what Flabyo is referring to), but a summer sunrise is warmer than a winter sunset so there's no way you can generalize sunrise vs. sunset from that.

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DC — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:53:36 -0700

#winterblues-You could try something like Philips Living Colors to simulate the colors of sunrise and sunset. It's not perfect but it's probably cheaper than those special light bulbs?

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BrianMowrey — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 17:51:29 -0700

dudes, I already asked and self-answered this one last month

As a ray of white sunlight travels through the atmosphere to an observer, some of the colors are scattered out of the beam by air molecules and airborne particles, changing the final color of the beam the viewer sees. Because the shorter wavelength components, such as blue and green, scatter more strongly, these colors are preferentially removed from the beam....

Sunset colors are typically more brilliant than sunrise colors, because the evening air contains more particles than morning air

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset

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Kosmopolit — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 18:44:43 -0700

I always just assumed people tended to get up after sunrise and stay awake after sunset through most of our evolutionary history so blue light was associated with mornings and red with sunsets.

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Rachæl Tyrell — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 06:57:53 -0700

Flashback!

So, in the previous month's thread, I'd asked about what to do about not getting my #collegebooks from Disability Services (which I am only getting now, at midterms), and was told to go to the dean of students, which I did, and now I'll be given a chance to catch up, an extended ability to withdraw if I can't hack it, and the possibility of being refunded if my profs think it's too late. So... YAY! and thank you.

Also, I'd asked about #adultaging and the possiblity of a retarded aging process in body AND brain, as I don't seem to be advancing like others around me, mentally or physically. I found this article: Brain Aging: the Truth is Skin Deep. I guess I got SOME good genes at least.

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Horrible Warning Si — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 05:24:45 -0700

All right - here's a weird one for you. Let's call it #CONTROLLINGIDEA

The C.I., to the uninitiated, is a phrase, concept, moral or philosophical agenda which, some writers believe, should underpin and inform every line, every scene, and every plotline within a story. It can be as vague or as precise as you want, and the writer needn't even share it with people. It's not even the same thing as a subtext: it's more like the "shadow" of a story than its soul. It doesn't even need to be particularly *true* or axiomatic, as long as it satisfies the writer's need to include something meaningful or aspirational at the root of their story.

The best example I can think of, as described by the writer of WALL-E, is "irrational love overcomes life programming." Five words which, once you know 'em, infest and inform every single aspect of that movie. Every character's personal arc is a different version of that story, every scene is a different take on it, every line of dialogue exists in service to that Idea. In other words the Controlling Idea is the motivating force which keeps a waffly writer On Target.

Generally, I keep them to myself. They're pretty personal things. But I'm working up towards starting a new project - something a bit experimental and weird - and I figured it'd be interesting to share my proto-controlling-idea before it's completely set in stone, to see how people feel about it. To discuss it, to tweak it, to debate it.

The aim, simply, is to create something as elegant, as concise, and as [true/idealistic] (delete as appropriate) as possible.

Here's my starting point, which (to me) is a bit too clunky and feels a bit leaky:

THAT WHICH CHERISHES LIFE WILL EVENTUALLY OVERCOME THAT WHICH UNDERVALUES IT.

Discuss.

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JP Carpenter — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:32:24 -0700

' #CONTROLLINGIDEA

That sounds like something I'd like to be true, but can't help thinking it's got no real reason to be? Maybe because I read The Road last year and now can't stop seeing every single thing I see in terms of its post-apocalypse use/uselessness or its calorific value...

Thinking about it, not sure I fully understand the idea... What is the 'that'? What is capable of 'cherishing' life other than a human, or some sort of relentless reproduction machine (selfish gene?)? What would undervalue life - and what life would it undervalue - its own, assuming it's a form of life that's doing the undervaluing or just other life that's in competition with it?

Think that statement raises quite a few questions of its own...

NEW HELP REQUEST:

#personal finance management

I am rubbish with money. Putting me in charge of money is like putting George Best in charge of an off licence. It's a bad idea. I want to be better with money and I want to get in control of my finances. Really I do. I promise not to be scared of them any more.

Is anyone using any good software to manage their finance (particularly UK people)? I can't seem to find something that could be described as a market leader here?

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Orpheus — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:45:35 -0700

#CONTROLLINGIDEA
I've not herd of this technique to writing before, unsurprisingly, and seems to make sense.
Having a bit of trouble getting my head around the 'idea' of the sentence, as if its trying to be too general in a specific way.

Without knowing the basis of the story, its hard to say how to direct the sentence. Some of the words you use are almost intentionally specific towards an entity, where as you said the idea needs to proliferate though all levels of the story. The term overcome also suggests that there is some form of rivalry where there may be no connection.

Either way, this is my take on the CI:

THOSE WHO CHERISH LIFE SHALL TRANSCEND THOSE WHO [DERIDE/UNDERRATE/BELITTLE] IT.

It feels more smooth to me anyway. Am I going in the right direction?

#personal finance management
When I first moved out I put together a sheet of income and regular bills on a spreadsheet. From there i just kept an eye on what i could spend between things (food/comics). If you're with Lloyd's TSB, they have a fantastic online banking system with £5 a month money manager categorising spendings and such, which im finding really helpfull.

Hope that helps!

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allana — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 19:35:39 -0700

#controllingidea

There are definitely some writers (Heinlein; Ayn Rand) with whom this is obvious. The former pulls it off; the latter makes me jaw-grind. (Oh man is anyone else pulling down those "Who is John Galt?" posters whenever they see them? Fucking awful.)
Mostly I would say "less cheesy plz?" I think Orpheus's change is poignant; making "THAT WHICH" a "THOSE WHO" is at least more structurally sound in my head, if not consequentially more cliche. You'll have to be more specific about your "THAT" if you don't want your morals embodied in characters.
I read an article about what being goth meant, back when I was an impressionable kid, that was all "Goths are more alive than regular people because we are constantly reminding ourselves of how close and looming death is" something something. Your controlling idea is reminding me of that. Sorry!

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Beamish — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:05:46 -0700

#controllingidea

I haven't heard of this tool either, and it's clear why a writer would keep it private, but I'd say it's a good idea idea as long as you don't lose your story to the idea.

#finance
There are probably good apps for finance management, however, and I cannot imagine I'd recommend this due to its high level of cheesitude, but check out Dave Ramsey's material. His approach is more of a fix the problem and less find a way to control it. Also, the best advice I've gotten for finance is, don't finance a bag of M&Ms, or if you don't have the cash you probably don't need the _____.

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brittanica — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:30:54 -0700

#comicconmeltdown

The fella seems to be hinting that he wants us to go to a comic convention for our honeymoon (which, I can only assume is gonna happen next year, after 2 years of putting off our wedding), as he is asking me which one I'd most want to go to.
My only problem is I have a history of freaking the fuck out in large groups of people. And I don't handle stress too well in general.
I'm trying to think of a con that:
1. is really fun (I know I might spend most of my time cosplay-spotting, but I'd like to be able to go to panels and lots of activities)
2. might actually allow a couple inches breathing room
3. isn't too much of a hassle getting to (I live in Nashville)
Ideas?
SDCC might be right out the window, but Chicago? NYCC? I'd like to go to Dragon*Con but the fella seems to want something bigger.
Besides those suggestions, any tips on keeping your cool in the middle of a gelatinous blob of nerdom?

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Alan Tyson — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:43:02 -0700

#ControllingIdea

I'm curious, Si, is this another term for what most people call "theme," or do you mean something different?

A way to clip your idea down, while giving you a touch more breathing room, might be use "Life Victorious."

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Flabyo — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:24:00 -0700

#comicconmeltdown

any tips on keeping your cool in the middle of a gelatinous blob of nerdom?

The fact that it *is* a blob of nerdom.

This isn't like being in a crowd at a hockey game, or with a bunch of students at a classical concert.

These people are nerds. They're like you. They're into what you're into. They have the same hopes and fears that you do.

Everyone at a con like that is at the con cause it's what they're into. Many of them will be going through the same set of emotions.

These people are your people, and you are one of theirs.

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oddbill — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 19:56:42 -0700

#ControllingIdea

I think I get what you mean by "That which loves life transcends that which undervalues it", and I've just spent a half hour trying to rephrase it with less words, and was unable to. That may be a fine description of the concept.

I tried to make it into latin, thinking it might go shorter, but the best i could do was:

vitæ amorem excedit vitae minoris aestimo

Which isn't really more succinct, but it sounds more authoritative. You could put a "- Cicero" after it and pretend to be high-falutin', I guess.

Maybe the love of life transcends the degradation of life? To de-grade something is kind of a way of undervaluing it.

vitæ amorem excedit degradationem vitae

Still not shorter. Hm.

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Horrible Warning Si — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 06:29:57 -0700

#controllingidea

Appreciate all the thoughts, folks -- keep 'em coming. Very interesting, and very valuable, to open this stuff up to the world at a far earlier stage than normal.

@Alan Tyson -- personally, I'd say it's something quite different to a "theme". (Go back to the example I gave: you might argue the "theme" of WALL-E is one of ecological disaster, human consumerism, something like that. The controlling idea is far more invisible and far less intrusive: it's more like a set of traintracks which allow the writer to tell his story without fear of deviation or irrelevance, and which provides the viewer with a subconscious sense of homogeneity and elegance they might otherwise miss. We've all seen movies which feel like "a mess", even if they have very clearly defined themes and character through-arcs, and IMO that's often because the writer hasn't taken the time to isolate a controlling idea.

...all of which is not to say that the C.I. way of plotting is the only one there is. A lot of writers would argue that this sort of mentality is proscriptive or leads to formulaic plots. I can see both sides of that particular debate, for what it's worth, and I tend to approach different projects in very different ways. It just so happens that the project I mentioned above, at this very early stage, threatens to spin-off into an unfocused ideastorm and I think it'll help me to keep myself on the straight-and-narrow to isolate the one axiom which pins all the disaparate concepts, themes and characters together.

For instance, this tale I'm working towards includes all kinds of conceptual ingrendients - religious views of an afterlife, desensitization to violence and death, war, dying-for-a-cause, depression-leading-to-suicide, aging, technology as a means of avoiding death, technology as a means of glorifying death, martyrdom, non-human attitudes towards death, political attitudes towards victory and defeat, cowardice, etc etc. Somewhere in amidst all that guff is an elegant "truth" (or, at least, something we all *wish* were a truth) which will hold it all together: the task is to find it and boil it down.

...On which topic, since proposing the initial C.I. I've been noodling about with countless other iterations. Some of them feel far more "right" but lack elegance, some of them are concise and beautiful but don't quite fit the nebulous story I want to tell.

Nearest I've come so far, I think, is:

REVERENCE FOR LIFE OVERCOMES REVERENCE FOR DEATH.

(although it might be more like REVERENCE FOR LIFE OVERCOMES APATHY FOR DEATH.)

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Beamish — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 08:29:23 -0700

New Question
#Sampling/Mixing/Splicing (#SMS)

What is a good program for one to create new music by bastardizing old music?

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Rachæl Tyrell — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 21:35:08 -0700

New Question:

#electrickettle

I am tired of using the microwave to boil water for my perpetual cup of tea. I figure you brits would have a better grasp on what sort of electric kettle is best and most reliable. What should I buy? Are there electric teapots to keep it warm, too?

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oldhat — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 21:54:28 -0700

#comicconmeltdown

Can't offer any suggestions for cons, but I do have a phobia of crowds and had several freakouts at NYCC. Best advice I can give is to find a nice, quiet area for when you need it. This could be within the floor or the area outside of it, but the important thing is to just find a quiet space and calm yourself down before heading back out.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Warped Savant — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 00:26:23 -0700

Rachael -- Do you mean which brand of electric kettle? (Personally, I've always preferred range kettles as I find a lot of electric ones shut off on their own and sometimes I want my water to be even hotter so I simply leave it on the stove for longer.)

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Finagle — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 00:40:54 -0700

#controllingidea

This really reminds me of something in Nietzsche, but I'll be damned if I can put my finger on just which quote or aphorism exactly.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

glukkake — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 10:05:14 -0700

#electrickettle

We have an electric kettle that I adore, just because it heats up water as hot as I'd like it & I like that I can just flip the switch and go about my business. I'm spacey and have a tendency to wander off & forget about important things like fires I started in my own damn home - especially with railroad apartments I can run off and not hear things going on on the other side of the apartment.

In any case, ours is one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Proctor-Silex-K2070-Automatic-Electric/dp/B00023XCWS/ref=pd_sim_k_1 cheap & simple.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Osmosis — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 12:09:41 -0700

NEW QUESTION: #amanistiredoflondon

Two questions, really. I've been living in London for the last eighteen months. I'm not enjoying it. So many people like it here it that I think I may be Doing It Wrong. At the moment I think it is dirty, noisy, rude, busy, confusing, frustrating, expensive, impersonal, and isolating (and at the moment those are all bad things). So I am looking for Whitechaplains' advice.

Query the first: How can I stop worrying and love the capital city?

Query the second: People I know who have moved here from outside have told me that, "Oh, I hated London when I moved here. But now I love it!" Well. I've got the first part down. How long should I give it before I give up and move back to the provinces?

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Osmosis — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 12:12:56 -0700

#electrickettle

Any device that raises tapwater to 100°C will do you fine. The only reason it need be in any way fancy is your own aesthetic preferences. I found one for a reasonable price at Walmart. I have never heard of an electric teapot, although they may exist. Without meaning to sound glib, teacosies work well! And are easy to knit!

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Flabyo — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 13:56:02 -0700

#electrickettle

The best electric kettles we use here in Blighty are ones you probably won't be able to get stateside, we can get 3000w monsters and I'm told the US power supply won't actually let you suck that much power down.

Basically, looks are unimportant. More wattage means it'll boil quicker. If you're in a hard water area you might prefer one that doesn't use an element as they're easier to descale. But to be honest you really don't need anything fancy. Only thing I'd avoid is anything 1000w or under, you're quicker boiling a pan on the stove than using one of those.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Rachæl Tyrell — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 14:46:16 -0700

double post. oops.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Rachæl Tyrell — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 14:49:05 -0700

#amanistiredoflondon

@Osmosis - I don't know London, but I do know NYC versus the wilderness of New Jersey. Have you considered that you might just not be a city person? Or you might have certain specific needs that might take some wrangling to get yourself comfortable? I love living in New York, but I've come to realize that there are certain things I need to arrange for myself, or my life will be frustrating. I need to live somewhere with trees outside my windows. I need to have natural light during the day. I need to have a bedroom that faces the inside of the block, and not a street with a bus route. I need to live in an area where I can leave the house with $30 and come home with bags and bags of belongings. I need to live where I won't get dirty looks for paying something with all pocket change, but rather, empathy. These things are all findable in New York City, it just takes some time and energy to GET them. Most people in New York I've known don't really care about trees outside windows, could care less about fresh air. Be true to your own needs, whatever they are.

Also, as far as people being polite, you get what you put out there. I'm asked regularly "where are you from?" because people don't assume that I could have lived in NYC for most of the past 14 years and still be friendly to strangers and shop owners. But because I've been friendly to a ridiculous degree, when I walk from my apartment to the subway, when I go to the grocery store, when I go to the bodega at 3am, I always have people smiling back and me and saying hello now. Embody the change you wish to see.

(also, I've been told "fuck you" repeatedly because I've made it my mission to point out when people are being publicly without manners. i ask people to stand to the right when I'm trying to walk up the escalator, I remind them to not stop walking in the middle of a stairway to check their phone, I tell them they are in the way if standing right in front of subway doors. I am not always polite about that. It makes me sort of happy when I get told "fuck you" in those instances.)

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Cameron C. — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 19:00:37 -0700

#comicconmeltdown

The first con I went to was Anime Expo just a few months ago in July and I had a huge freak out. The only reason I didnt just fall to my knees in the fetal position crying was because who I was with took me and lead me outside away from people so I could breathe D: When we were outside she told me that it was alrigt for me to just run outside if I needed to, that her and the others I was with would understand and wouldnt think I was being rude or anything. So a couple days later when I felt the same way I just told her I was gonna go outside and i ran away :3 Thats about all you can do, and if youre with people youre close to then it should work out fine.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Comicbookbunny — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 20:22:04 -0700

#showusyourboobs

I've been urged by a good deal of people that I should do a fetish pay site. Would basically be almost the same thing as I'm doing with my flickr, I cater to fetishes but on the site it would be boobies, chat, videos (of i'm not sure what) people writting in to say what they want to see pictures of (with in reason...) and anything else cleared by the hubby.
I would need to go through all the trouble of finding someone to build the site and what not. (i have zero idea on how to even find a reputable site builder...)
Good Idea? Bad Idea? No one would pay to see you nekked/ your boobs... ect.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Greasemonkey — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 03:00:06 -0700

Men always enjoy seeing boobs. Even gay men like them.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Kosmopolit — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 04:51:59 -0700

#Siri - just curious if anyone has used the new Siri personal assistant app fro the iPhone 4s.

If so, does it live up to the claims?

Because if we've got a program that understands natural speech and has the ability to interpret ambiguous commands are we very far away from having actual domestic robots?

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Labyrinthine — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 06:23:24 -0700

#controllingidea How do you feel about "vitaphilia" for love of life? or is that just making it more complex?

Alternately, you might look into the concept of negentropy as metaphor. I recently read a good James Tiptree Jr. biography by Julie Phillips, and there was a lot of interesting stuff on Tiptree/Sheldon's ideas about negentropy as a life goal/reason for living

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Warped Savant — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 06:48:06 -0700

#showusyourboobs -- The one thing I can suggest: Be really sure that it's not something you might regret in a few years. I have no suggestions on setting up a paysite. Hopefully other people on here do.
PS: You're a beautiful woman, I imagine you'd make a fair amount of money.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Beamish — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 09:30:52 -0700

#showusyourboobs

I agree with Warped Savant, think of the future comicbookbunny, if you are comfortable doing it by all means. There has to be an online service to create the sites, there is for everything else.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

taphead — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 09:39:10 -0700

#SMS

You should get yourself a controller of some kind, and chances are that will net you a license for a slimmed down version of Ableton Live. Things like the Korg Nano Series and the Akai LPD8 are nice things to have around, or M-Audio keyboards. Live is an awesome bit of software, and very easy to get into.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Comicbookbunny — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 10:09:40 -0700

@Warped Savant and @Beamish #showusyourboobs Defiantly wouldn't be bothered with it later on- I'm planning on keeping it classy nothing hardcore (no sex and no sexual acts with my twat involved- just pictures of it) Keeping it geared to strip tease at most. I've got no problems with nudity what so ever and i'm a huge fan of fetishes heh.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

RenThing — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 10:59:52 -0700

#Siri

Siri, so far, has been somewhere between decent and good. The voice recognition isn't always up to snuff but it could be just the way I talk (which is sometimes too fast) and it does have some limits to what it can do (for instance, it can record a message to someone, but you can't dictate changes to the message). However, I'm liking it for easy stuff like voice-dialing or searching the web for on the fly stuff.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Kosmopolit — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:42:43 -0700

#Controlling idea

"Vitae Invictus" - "Life, unconquerable" or "Life, invincible".

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Horrible Warning Si — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 04:12:03 -0700

Whitechapel is the Best Place.

that is all.

(thanks everyone)

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Warped Savant — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 07:09:59 -0700

#showusyourboobs

How long have you been thinking about setting a site up? (Just to make sure it's not a impulse idea.) And, like I said, I think you could make a decent amount of money as long as it's secure so that people have to pay to log on and I find that having it so that people can't right click and save the images. Sure, there's ways around that, but I would figure it's better to dissuade people as much as possible from paying for a month, downloading everything onto their computer and sharing it all on sites life 4chan and what-have-you. (I'm talking in the long term once there's a fair amount of pictures up.)

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Morac — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 08:13:14 -0700

#showusyourboobs side tangent:
@Warped Savant: I would strongly advise against disabling right-click. If you do it with scripting (ie. it's a regular webpage, but you have used javascript or something similar to disable the right-click context menu functionality), it's still incredibly easy to get around for those that care, and infuriating/insulting for those that don't. The other option would be to do an entirely flash-based website, which I also advise against because I hate those things with a passion (if you are interested, I am sure there are a number of articles out there that can explain why flash-based websites are bad).

All right, tangent rant over, you may continue.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

government spy — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:49:28 -0700

#showusyourboobs

Would there be a Whitechapel discount involved? /perv

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Comicbookbunny — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:33:55 -0700

#showusyourboobs

@Warped Savant I already have my flickr site set up to do the fetish pictures (sans boobs unless i marked them as friend) I like doing it I just don't get paid for it heh. I've been wanting to do it for a while (years) never felt that anything would come of it- lately friends have been urging me to do the site.
The draw would be a on a bit more personal level the pay means you get to see the boobs of course, you get to send requests of what you want to see, have chats and maybe a personal video sent to your in box. Maybe a tier level of subscription. level one you can see pictures of teh boobs Level two is boobs and chat plus you can request pictures to be done with your favorite fetish in mind, level three all the above and you can request video fetish fun sent to your inbox only)

There really isn't much you can do to keep people from yoinking content- there is always screen capture. My boobs/nekked are already around the net just a bit harder to find at the moment ;) I think having the other things available as levels would still bring in money and clients and I wouldn't loose too much to people who have snipping tools.

@government spy of course it's a consultant discount! what fetish should I do for you ;) hehe

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Vornaskotti — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 04:25:20 -0700

#soundforpublicplaces

I started on a new day job, which involves TV-screens in public places running ads. One part in the job is to normalize the sound and optimize it for public places. Some of the ads have just narration, some of them have music and narration both. I'm currently using SoundForge and just Normalizing the speech-only bits to -3dB, and the speech+music with RMS to -15dB and that's it - the end result is more or less okay. Nevertheless, all you sound wizard out there, is there something else that's straightforward I could do for it? Note that hi-fi quality is not needed, just reasonable uniformity of perceived sound levels and clarity in an environment where there's a lot of people, so there really is not time to thinker with each clip individually.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

RadioGuy — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 05:22:10 -0700

@Vornaskotti #soundforpublicplaces

You'll definitely want to run a compressor (and probably a limiter) over the audio -- this will increase the perceived loudness of the sound, in a way that helps cut through whatever background noise is going on.

I've never personally used SoundForge, but most audio editing packages have plug-ins (or built in effects) for compressors and limiters.

In layman's terms, a compressor is like an automatic volume controller... Imagine playing the sound, keeping your hand on the volume control, turning it down when the sound gets loud and turning it up when the sound is quieter. This is what the compressor does, but as an automated effect, it can do this very quickly, and react instantly to changes in the volume.

The effect of all this is a reduction in dynamic range (the difference in volume between the loudest and quietest parts of the audio). Your waveform will end up looking a lot less "spikey", and the audio will sound louder, even at the same numerical volume. This is what they do to TV commercials (which is why they always sound louder than the TV show), and pop music.

For audio playing in public places with some amount of background noise, compressed audio will cut through much better.

If you have the narration and music as separate tracks, I'd recommend compressing the narration somewhat strongly, and the music lightly (or not at all). Then tweak the volume of each so that the voice is easily hearable over the background music. Then normalize the whole thing (as you've already been doing).

I can't offer too many recommendations for specific settings & values, since these are presented differently from program to program, but most should have a "preview" option that will let you hear the different compressor presets in realtime. The way to learn is simply to experiment with the settings & presets you have, run them, look at the waveform and hear how it sounds, then hit "undo" and try some others.

Let me know if you want/need further tips... (I rarely get the opportunity to exercise my audio-nerdness these days!)

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

badbear — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 06:58:31 -0700

#amanistiredoflondon
Go out. Go out a lot. Go do wierd stuff. Eat strange food and look at world renowned art and go watch a foreign film that would never get shown at a provincial cinema. Go to a festival or a market on the weekend or take a trip out of town if it's making you crazy - you are in a massive transport hub after all. The great thing about London is that you are never actually stuck where you are.

I grew up in a tiny village in the country and there was nothing there except fields and trees and houses. For this reason, after ten years, I am still living in London. I like being able to get a pint of milk on any given day without having to travel further than a five minute walk. I like not having to drive anywhere ever. I like being able to go to gigs and still get home in the middle of the night without it being a massive deal. I'm a member of the BFI and the Tate and I go to both regularly.

London is all the things you described it as unless you go do stuff. Then it is all the things you described it as but at least you can do a billion things here that you can't really do anywhere else in this country.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Vornaskotti — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 12:31:05 -0700

RadioGuy:

#soundforpublicplaces

Cheers, I'll try fiddling with those. Unfortunately all the audio is usually smashed on just one track and the total mix of music+speech & speech only tracks is the challenge, since they should be more or less in the same perceived volume. But I'll try fiddling with the compressors and limiters and see what happens!

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

taphead — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:58:04 -0700

#soundforpublicplaces

Compressors and EQs are your friend. Like all of the most rewarding friends, they are also thoroughly infuriating.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

JP Carpenter — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 15:00:09 -0700

#amanistiredoflondon

Although I do hope it works out for you and some people have given some great advice/suggestions for how to get on there, I think it's also OK not to love London...

Have worked there for 15 years but deliberately never lived in it, as I just think it'd finish me off - I just don't like the place. There's bits of it I like, yes, but mostly I just find it a toxic place that sucks the life out of me.

But there are a lot of people I know who wouldn't dream of living anywhere else and who love all the things I hate, so I guess different places suit different people.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Warped Savant — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:49:28 -0700

#showusyourboobs -- Since you've thought about it for awhile, I say go for it. And yeah, you guys are right. People tend to want to save stuff like that so disabling right click save would be a bad idea. If you do decide to go for it, let us know how it's progressing.

And where to sign up ;)

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

dorkmuffin — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 19:03:26 -0700

#showusyourboobs — disabling right-click would just encourage people to use screen shots. People are assholes. Also: nerds.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

oldhat — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:57:14 -0700

So for those wondering how the piercing was going, um...well it looks like one of them got infected. There's a bit of pain, sensitivity and a bit of clear pus with slight blood when I tried to investigate. So...I guess I leave the piercing be and still clean like a motherfucker?

I think this might have to do with the fact that the side that it's infected on is the side I sleep on.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Labyrinthine — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 23:01:35 -0700

#howiscaffieneformed

I'm having this issue where sometimes (not actually that often, but enough to notice a pattern), after I drink a cup of tea, I get an anxious feeling w/ racing heart-beat and slight nausea. I first noticed it happening very late in the evening, so I stopped drinking tea after dark unless I'm all-nighting, but it just happened at 4:00 in the afternoon.

I have an anxiety disorder so, y'know, it's not ideal to be triggering it with foodstuffs. Why is this happening, why doesn't it happen EVERY time I drink tea and how can I stop it short of quitting caffiene entirely? (tea is my only source and I get a bit vague and headachey without a morning cup... the other three-four cups a day are just a Russian comfort thing :P) Would drinking out of smaller mugs help at all?

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

glukkake — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 23:37:16 -0700

@oldhat yup, just keep at it. it'll get better over a few days, hopefully. Be sure to treat yourself right & eat/drink properly so as not to tax your immune system.

signed,
Glukkake, who recently bashed her microdermal and has it angry, swollen and weepy and is trying not to freak out that it will have to be scalpeled out of her bits.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Vornaskotti — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:26:32 -0700

#showusyourboobs

I also join the chorus of discouraging anybody from disabling right click save, or doing a website with Flash. That stuff is web design douchebaggery. A far better way would be to watermark the photos with a tasteful logo and url, so when someone leaks them to 4chan or where-ever, people know where to come for more :)

Building the site itself is another matter. If you want to do it on the cheap, while at the same time keeping the strings in your own hands and keeping it easily updateable and editable, WordPress is a good publication platform and MemberWing-X -plugin is great for dividing content into configurable subscriber materials. We've been using it for about a year now professionally without any major problems. It requires a little bit of tech savviness though, so unless you are a techie, you'll need someone to whip up the site for you and do a bit of housekeeping now and then. In the end both systems are very easy to learn when they're running and need relatively little tinkering with.

The custom video thing is an another matter. Frankly, I'm not sure what the EULA of video services like YouTube and Vimeo say about pron, just thinking about unlisted videos here like we do with Sneak Peeks. Of course you can just set up a Dropbox account, create the movie file and share it like that for the client to download.

I used to write for local adult entertainment magazines here in Winland for a few years and review net stuff etc, I'll try to take a minute and see if those services are still up and how they did their thang.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Beamish — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 04:58:15 -0700

Saw this and thought it would fit nicely.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Corey Waits — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 05:31:55 -0700

So for those wondering how the piercing was going, um...well it looks like one of them got infected. There's a bit of pain, sensitivity and a bit of clear pus with slight blood when I tried to investigate. So...I guess I leave the piercing be and still clean like a motherfucker?

I saw last time you asked lots of people suggested rock salt. When I've had infected piercings I've found the best thing is to soak them in a salty water (rock salt, not table, obviously). Soak it for a good five minutes, dry it with cotton tips (or whatever, but it definitely needs to be dry), and repeat that at least once a day. Don't step when it seems to have come good because you'll probably find the infection quickly return, so keep up the soaking regimen until it's well and truly fixed.

But don't discount the fact that it might not be able to be saved - I gave up on my vertical nipple after much soaking because it was apparent that it was never going to work because the piercing was maybe too deep, and definitely got caught on my clothing. It's amazing how much more a vertical nipple piercing will catch than a horizontal one.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

oldhat — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 20:16:21 -0700

#cleaningapiercing

Annnd....yep. Just cleaned out a whole whack of brownish pus. Definitely infected. Washed that bastard throughly with salt water and regular hot water and got as much pus out of the clamp as possible. Plus side, it's feeling a bit better now. Down side I'm seriously fighting the urge to rub a bit of dettol on it.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

dorkmuffin — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 16:49:16 -0700

@Oldhat, with new piercings, that's actually pretty normal. I mean, your body is healing. That is a wound. If you clean it properly, you can often minimize or even eliminate the infection, but it's not 100% definite.

I mean shit, my second holes still get infected when I wear cheap metal.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

dorkmuffin — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 16:57:00 -0700

OH AND I CAME HERE WITH A QUESTION.

#ChoosingADentist

SO I HAVE DENTAL! For my job. I also have a jaw-clenching/tooth-grinding problem as well as fully mature and grown in wisdom teeth. The former means I'm putting a lot of pressure on my teeth every night (I do wear a mouthguard but for some reason I just use that to chew on) and the latter means I haven't been able to wear my braces retainer for oh, 7 years now?

This means that my teeth don't close in front. Because they have migrated. And I think it's getting worse. And they're changing the way I speak because I have to talk around molars. I wouldn't give a shit if it was something aesthetic, but these suckers mean that I can't do things like open stuff with my front teeth. On the plus side, I can't bite my nails anymore.

A lot of background for a simple question.

In choosing a dentist, should I look for a periodontist or a general practitioner?

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Greasemonkey — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 17:07:33 -0700

See a GP and get a referral to a specialist. Ask around and find a dentist with a good rep.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

oddbill — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 19:21:13 -0700

#ChoosingADentist

Are your gums unhealthy? Do they bleed when you floss? If not - general practitioner. If gums bleed - periodontist first. Many practices have both under the same roof, as well as endotontists and orthodontists, so you can be given appointments for whichever is necessary. It seriously cuts down on waiting between appointments if you end up needing some complex sequence of work (which I have had to have on an embarrassing number of occasions).

I usually start either with a list of dentists from my insurance provider (so I know I'm starting with offices that will accept that insurance), or referrals from friends (that is the optimal method, by the way. People hate dentists. So if they like theirs, you know it's likely to go well) - then hit Yelp and read about them. Yelp is gold!

Then I'll make an appointment and go, but I won't get any work done unless I have a good feeling about the place when I'm in there. I have left dentists after a single visit and never returned based on the feeling I got about the place. It's worth it to be very picky. Dental work is expensive, even with insurance, and it takes a long time. Find dentists you feel you could continue seeing for years, that you actually kind of like. It will pay off. You will go more regularly, and your mouth will be happy.

You are taking dental advice from this man:

You can trust me. I have experience in this realm.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Orpheus — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 19:45:23 -0700

#howiscaffieneformed

You're describing classic intoxication, known as 'caffeine jitters' and can be caused even by mild doses of caffeine. Every persons tolerance varies, depending on how often and how much you indulge.

The headache in the morning is probably just withdrawal, if you find that not having tea causes it.

SOLUTION: There are a few ways to go around this, the first is just to be hydrated. Have some water with your tea. And some biscuits.
AND/OR changing how you take the tea. Smaller cup means smaller dose, weaker tea means weaker dose.

Hope this helps!

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

dorkmuffin — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 20:23:49 -0700

@Oddbill, but you probably didn't have 7 years of orthodontic work between the ages of 7 and 14.

I did, they just didn't plan for my wisdom teeth fitting into my mouth and my anxious anxious tooth grinding.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

oddbill — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 20:42:23 -0700

@dorkmuffin - yeah, I never actually had any orthodontic work done until starting about 6 months ago. I'm doing it now. In a few more months I'll do a before/after.

But to stay legit I'll note that I did have all my wisdoms pulled right out of my head some years ago, and my gob is still crooked. All the teeth want to be up front.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Kay Orchison — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 01:57:36 -0700

@Comicbookbunny

I can help you out with web design and also with contacts for folk who have ventured into similar territory, for advice/support. My email is in my profile.

#showusyourboobs

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Vornaskotti — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 02:35:07 -0700

#ChoosingADentist

A sort of an aside, if you haven't yet tried laser drills, I can heartily recommend them. I'm not horribly pain shy, having done piercings and scarrings on myself and popped dislocated fingers and shoulders & like that back on place, but when I hear the whine of a dentist's drill, I scream like a six year old girl (background: drilling hurts like motherfuck every time for me, and up here in the 70's and 80's school dentists didn't use numbing agents when drilling, so we have a generation of dentist fearing 30-somethings here). The laser drill doesn't really hurt that much less, but instead of that pure terror inducing whine it just goes pop-pop-pop.

Also, motherfucking lasers!

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

glukkake — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 08:08:06 -0700

LASER DRILLS ARE A THING?! When I go back for my checkup in 3 months I'm so asking for the laser.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Vornaskotti — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 10:00:02 -0700

glukkake:

#ChoosintADentist

YEP! Did I mention it smells like burning keratin?

>.>

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

256 — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 17:58:54 -0700

#howiscaffieneformed

Actually, on reading that, it sounded a lot like some anxiety/panic attacks I've had. And had described to me.

Is it possible that the effects aren't actually being caused by the caffeine? That seems particularly plausible if you don't get them every time you have a caffeinated drink. I don't know if this interpretation is actually useful, but it might be worth considering.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Internaut — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 09:03:17 -0800

#Awesomegroomsmangifts

Trying to figure out a good, hopefully unique groomsman's gift I can give to my best man and groomsmen at my upcoming wedding (June 30th, so have some time, but I'd like to get it nailed down.) I was considering customized Beer Steins until I realized they would be a minimum of 50 bucks a piece. Any ideas? They're all nerds-Video games, comics, Tabletop gaming, Fantasy and Sci-Fi if that helps narrow the spectrum. Any suggestions would be most appreciated!

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Kosmopolit — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 14:07:26 -0800

#Awesomegroomsmangifts

They smokers?

You can get some awesome cigars for $20 each.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Greasemonkey — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 14:30:44 -0800

Monte Cristo #2's are a fantastic smoke for around $20 each.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Flabyo — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 14:48:58 -0800

Beer tankards are actually traditional in our family. I have a nice little row of them now.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

D,Extremist — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 17:00:43 -0800

OK Vague question here don't really expect an answer but hope to god to one day fine the name of this band & song

Have so little info

But basically remember the music video band painted silver naked playing instruments (NOT THE CHILLI PEPPERS) the band had one female member a drummer with a bushy brown hippy beard badly drawn boy hair, the singer really over weight, all naked all painted silver shot in dark lighting

Ahh I hate it when you can't remember the name of a song even though you know its a really good one that even the music Nazis you know & pretend to befriend would like

It's the only song left out of thousands i have that has eluded me in tracking it down

on a side note finding the name of a band & song no one can remember would probably be my super power, that & bringing inflatable people to life like a sick blue fairy

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Comicbookbunny — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 18:54:36 -0800

#showusyourboobs

Thanks everyone- I have quite a lot of the details paned out. I do need to get someone to build me a site- I can't do it on my own what i want will have a few layers and such that I'd make a mess of. Not worried about doing it on the cheap, just done well and nice looking.

Going to totally skip doing the special request vids (or just save that headache for later) When all is said and done- will need people to poke around the site and do a test run ;)

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

flecky — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 19:13:37 -0800

Good grief.You guys have been busy since i've been away.The examination of the human condition on a visceral level has tweaked my seritonin receptors and caused total synaptic freakout.please,excuse my grammer..my eyes are oozing some sort of foul rancid pus.i have symptoms of hypnogogia.I fear that if i have one more cup of coffee the laws of physics will cause my laptop to turn into a burnt out insect husk.Safety in numbers,eh,Whitechapel?

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Labyrinthine — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 21:55:31 -0800

#howiscaffieneformed 256 I'm sure actualfax anxiety is, like, CONTRIBUTING, but I wanted to know about physiological effects since I can't just avoid tea when I feel anxious.

EDIT: it looks like smaller cups are the way to go :P does having it with food actually slow down the effect?

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

sneak046 — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 08:50:52 -0800

@D,Extremist:

This pops up in my Facebook friends' feed every now and then, and I think it's what you are talking about:

@Labrynthine

Have you tried substituting your tea for a nil-caffeine alternative like rooibos?

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Internaut — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:16:08 -0800

#Awesomegroomsmangifts

Unfortunately, no, none of them are smokers. That would make it too easy.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

oldhat — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:30:51 -0800

#Awesomegroomsmangifts

My initial thought would be, either at the reception for a few minutes or afterwards, to at least get two bottles of DeuS Brut Des Flandres (an AMAZING* beer served in flute glasses (which may be cheaper to get custom made for them), but at $45 or so a bottle may be out of your price range), and share it with them. This might not work so much as a gift, thinking on it, but at least as a special thank you for them. My thoughts are that gifts are great, but sharing a really nice beer with your friends on a special occassion, if only for a few minutes before you have to get back to it all, would be really heartwarming.

*personal tastes may vary

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

sellmeyoursoul — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 13:09:14 -0800

@Oldhat - Seriously, I'd consider using the Deus instead of Champagne for the entire reception (assuming I had the money). For a light, bubbly beer, that stuff is teh yums!

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

oldhat — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 13:42:47 -0800

@sellmeyoursoul I tried it once when I was in NYC and you know...there WILL be a bottle of that at my wedding. Just for me and the person I married, though. The rest have to settle with other fine craft beers that I plan on serving.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Kosmopolit — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:21:20 -0800

@labrynthine besides non-caffeinated alternatives like Rooibos (or camomile) you can get decaffeinated teabags.

It might be wroth trying those for a few days just to get a better idea of what the cause is.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Kosmopolit — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:52:48 -0800

#Awesomegroomsmangifts

How much money are we looking at in total?

Since they're all nerds you COULD commission a group drawing of them as superheroes and get permission to make a small number of copies so everyone gets one.

Or you could buy those bogus moon land titles on the conceit you'll all move there eventually.

Or find a really cool looking project on kickstarter and kick in $10 or $20 in each person's name.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Ryan S Thomason — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:26:54 -0800

D,Extremist -

You're thinking of Ultrasound, there's some tracks up on youtube but the video you're after isn't there... I can remember the video but not what it was called.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Cat Vincent — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:45:57 -0800

#prowriter101:

So, I've got actual gigs coming where people will pay me money for words. One is an article in a book, the other is copywriting for a website. All non-fic.

Big question from all you pro's, please:
Contracts, agents etc. WTF?

Is there a source for blank writer's contracts to fill in as needed? And something similar for invoices for me to send to client? Do I need an agent before having a specific book or such to sell?

And any advice on actually succeeding in this greatly appreciated!

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

gorteck — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:23:20 -0800

I am not sure how to PM someone so I am hoping that a MOD will help out here.
reptilegrrl if you are into PA novels you should read - The Untimely Death of Cory Sanderson by Chris Emmy Jackson. I think you will like it.
Peace and your picture is great.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

RenThing — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 01:37:43 -0800

There are no PMs on Whitechapel.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Labyrinthine — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 03:34:57 -0800

@Sneak046 I have always been a bit resistant to "tea"s that are not actually made of tea, but I tried rooibos reently and it was ok, so maybe I should stock up on that and just replace my non-morning cups with it... I suppose I'd get used to it eventually.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

256 — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 06:22:18 -0800

Useless protip: A "tea" that isn't actually made from tea is a tisane.

Also:

Q: Why do anarchists only drink tisanes?

A: Because all proper tea is theft.

*rimshot*

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

joe.distort — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 12:42:11 -0800

ok i know its not as interesting as seeing bunny with the hashtag #showusyourboobs underneath ;) , but ive got another internet question

i run a very small business, and well, the recession and rising healthcare costs are starting to kill us. im working twice as hard to pull in sjust about the same money as last years returns blablablabla im trying to pull more customers essentially. we have a little website thats very basic, and i want to get us google keyworded. whats the best/cheapest way to do this for two words? not sure if i should just go straight through the Goog or what not, ive never set anything up like this.

#googlekeywords

(please no other random advice. its not MY business, i just get paid to run it. i am just looking for this one thing.)

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Internaut — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:10:36 -0800

#Awesomegroomsmangifts

I was thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-40 bucks per groomsman, 5 total (counting the best man)

The Deus is a superb idea I will keep in mind, thanks for the heads up. I usually drink Imperials, ales and stouts-But I'm always open to recommendations from Whitechapel!

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Kosmopolit — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:40:11 -0800

#googlekeywords

I use Google adwords in my business.

It generates hits directly, obviously, but I think it also helps raise our position in the listings.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Beamish — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:53:55 -0800

#Awesomegroomsmangifts

I got mine Excalibur letter openers.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Corey Waits — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 17:58:47 -0800

#googlekeywords

Yeah, I help the boss run his Google AdWords account and it seems like the best option... Not that I've looked elsewhere, but they've got a robust set of features and obviously it's tied directly in to Google's search page which most people use.

If you decide to use it and want some help figuring it out just ask here again and I'll probably have some insight.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

dorkmuffin — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 19:38:08 -0800

#googlekeywords

Making sure your site is well tagged and organized and links out to other sites can also boost the organic ratings of a page.

I work at a marketing firm that does a lot of stuff with search but that's about all I know. That and Google AdWords is kind of what everyone uses.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Warped Savant — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:32:31 -0800

#showusyourboobs -- As a sincere offer: If you want to have someone help test it for bugs, glitches, goofy coding, etc. I willing to spend some time doing just that. (And no, I'm not offering for the obvious reason of being a male. I'm offering because testing sites / coding is something that I genuinely enjoy doing.)

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Scrymgeour — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:51:38 -0800

#tired of london
where do you live? London is a big old place and the area you live in can seriously affect your viewpoint.
Also try to find some secret places (for example just off NEW compton street there is a beautiful garden thats open to the public, or a cocktail from cahloo callay, (i think that's the spelling) or sunday afternoons at the Flask in highgate......basically London needs to be explored or all you get is shit food and expensive drinks and packed tubes, also Londoners are way more friendly than mancunians in my opinion, and lots of londoners are actually from elsewhere so can be pretty interesting folks...

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Horrible Warning Si — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 02:17:59 -0800

#Awesomegroomsmangifts

Cufflinks every time. You'll find a billion online places which make funny/clever/precious cufflinks to suit all personalities and interests (ie: video gaming - get 'em some SPACE INVADERS links). They wear 'em on the big day, everyone gets to admire your generosity and taste, win win win. Throw in a tie-pin or whatever to the mix if you're feeling flush.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

joe.distort — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 08:02:24 -0800

#googlekeywords

thanks all, ive set up with them. will see how this all works out. sadly i already found out i cant do exactly what i wanted, which is get keyword-linked and promoted in search order. i spoke with them and they gave me some info how to get moving in that direction, but it appears adwords really only works for those little ads that pop on the side/top that most of us probably dont even look at, haha. not THAT worried as my target demo is not necessarily internet savvy, and they dont automatically filter out the stuff that we do.

fingers crossed! i have a pretty good job that im starting to really like and get good at...but business really is dropping off and not only does it suck, it is causing a cloud of anxiety to follow me around.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

RenThing — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 14:03:44 -0800

#Awesomegroomsmangifts

Couple of suggestions:
1. Engraved flasks - Many malls have a place that will do engraving for cheap
2. Non-engraved steins or nice flasks - Just because it doesn't have the reason for the gift doesn't mean they won't know who it is from or why they got it
3. Nice dice sets (because you said they were nerds/geeks) - There are a couple of places that do sets of dice in previous stones or metal.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

TheEndsOfInvention — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:20:05 -0800

#AnimeReview

I have a shot at an unpaid review position for Subtitled Online.
They want a 1,000 word tester review in a week, of an anime film or series of my choice.

Settling for the obvious Mononoke / Nausicaa / Laputa (ohfuckit, all of Miyazaki) / Ghost in the Shell / Akira... would feel lazy.

I'm currently fancying either Death Note (because it's my favourite, despite really belonging in the 'lazy, obvious' section) or the first 8 episodes of the new Hellsing (the Ultimate OVA thingummyjig) but haven't made my mind up yet.

Whitechapel, make my mind up for me! Something decent, deep, mature(ish), y'know, review-able.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Flabyo — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:28:52 -0800

#AnimeReview - a movie rather than a series?

Not giving a shit and fancy something really out there? Do 'Mind Game'.

Something slightly more sensible but still 'cool rather than mainstream'? Go for '5cm Per Second'.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

TheEndsOfInvention — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:35:04 -0800

#AnimeReview

A film would certainly be more sensible! Problem is I just couldn't think of a good one that wasn't in The List.

'Cool' would, I imagine, score me some points.

Cheers, I'll check both of those out now.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Flabyo — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:43:09 -0800

I am now trying to resist watching Mind Game again before I go to bed. I can actually blame Warren for that one...

he linked this clip a few years back

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Greasemonkey — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:45:26 -0800

#AnimeReview

Memories

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Royal Space Force: The Wings Of Honneamise

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Finagle — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 03:38:52 -0800

Grim Meathook Future Fiction

#grimmeathookfuturefiction

I have an urge to read fiction depicting dystopic futures of severe economic collapse and resource exhaustion. Far past the point of, say, Bladerunner, to where the vast majority of the severely reduced population leads a serflike subsistence existence stripmining old landfill sites for trace elements and pure DNA samples, while a few overlords with resources live in castles of tech wizardry. The dark corollary to Clarke's dictum: In the absence of resources, any technology is indistinguishable from magic. Post-apocalyptic, but without the apocalypse because nobody could afford it. That sort of thing.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Osmosis — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 04:01:46 -0800

#amanistiredoflondon

Thanks for kind words and suggestions, folks. It's genuinely much appreciated. Been a bit up and down lately with a number of other things, and I just don't think this town's helping. Deep thoughts a-thinking.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

king monkey — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 05:24:04 -0800

#grimmeathookfuturefiction

Have you done The Men In The Jungle by Norman Spinrad? I know He Who Shall Release Attack Eels raves about Bug Jack Barron but I think this could fit your bill....

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Kosmopolit — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 05:50:27 -0800

#grimmeathookfuturefiction

John Brunner:

Stand on Zanzibar
The Sheep Look Up
The Jagged Orbit
Shockwave Rider

Ian McDonald's Brasyl has several main narrative threads including one set in the past but large parts of it will meet your requirements.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Internaut — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 05:52:15 -0800

#AnimeReview
SUMMER WARS

The newer Appleseed films might fall in the no-duh section

Sword of the Stranger is amazing.

Origin is good too.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Comicbookbunny — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 09:04:23 -0800

#showmeyourboobs
@Warped Savant danka I'll likely put out a call here for people to poke the site.

My current problem is finding someone to build it. I messaged a company with my specifications and they asked what my budget it- from what i thought it was the other way around they tell you how much all it will cost. From what I've seen it will cost me 4,000 on the low end. Wanting something good I was expecting them to let me know "well you want a cheap ass looking piece of shit" it will cost you X if you want something nice and crisp and artistic (like you specified) it will cost Y. I already have a fantastic graphic designer <3 so I know i have someone to throw pretty things in there. I've had plenty of offers to "help" but I've got the hubby for that part. He just can't do from the ground up.

I've also cut down a lot of the things I was going to put on there. No tier system and no chat (but there is a contact me section) I'm defiantly not going the flash route i've run into a few sites run on it and found it pretty but frustrating.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

roadscum — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 09:31:14 -0800

#grimmeathookfuturefiction
Funny you should mention it, just finished reading Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker. Grim, very grim - remember Threads, back in 1980whatever it was? Well this is what happens next. A punch little read and about as far from happy happy joy joy as it's possible to get, there were bits where I could actually smell the shit.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Slick — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 10:11:33 -0800

#showmeyourboobs

I used to do websites for certain adult services so I can probably help you out though my dreamweaver skills may be slightly rusty. I can also help some with getting your site known in appropriate places. You can find my email in my profile.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

TheEndsOfInvention — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:18:36 -0800

#AnimeReview
Cheers peoples, there's loads to think about.
I may as well say that, @Flabyo, you have turned me into a blubbering wreck of a man. 5 Centimeters Per Second is outstanding, *sniff*

#grimmeathookfuturefiction
I can second Riddley Walker, mad, muddy sort of a thing, it is.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

DC — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:47:07 -0800

#GoogleReaderOnNokia
I have a Nokia 5800 xpress music and I use the browser to make quick check ups on some places (email box, 2 message boards, facebook and google reader). Since the past week when google chanced readers' design I can't check anything on it. Whenever I click in one of the items on my feed the browser shuts down. Anyone have the same problem or heard about it?
(wrote this on the cellphone)

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Vornaskotti — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 23:34:20 -0800

#showmeyourboobs

BTW, there's something you need to also factor in: if you are running a website that's actually a service, not just a hobby/vanity thing, there's the matter of maintenance and ISP reliability. It's not enough just to kick the site up, there needs to be someone committed to updating the content management system, and you need to have a service provider who you can call and shout at when the site goes down from traffic or some other reason.

That said, web design companies can cost quite a lot. It might be useful to look for freelancers running their own small outfit, get some kind of portfolio from them and give the sites to tech/web savvy friends to check. I know some people up here in Commie Reindeerland who've done such work, I'm sure there must be freelancers like that over there too.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Greasemonkey — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 01:47:48 -0800

5 Centimetres Per Second is one of the few films I don't look away from, even for an instant, for fear of missing even one perfectly rendered frame. Best-looking animation from any genre, for my money.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Vornaskotti — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 03:28:57 -0800

#showmeyourboobs

Actually, a pal who has done this for a living might be interested in building this service, he's currently maintaining other similar projects and he's specialized in doing functional and good web shop and net service stuff using cheap or free tools. He's based in Finland, but that shouldn't be a practical problem. Drop me an e-mail and I'll connect you two: janos ät iki dot fi

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Soviet Rocket No. 9 — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 10:24:14 -0800

#BritishPathe

British Pathe` (I think thats how they say their name) has put their enitre catalogue on youtube. Those whitechaplers in the UK please help me out, since I'm not sure if its satire or real.

I think its satire...

Tips For Aspiring Secretarie

I think its real...

Playboy Bunny Girls and The Playboy Club

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Comicbookbunny — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 18:51:24 -0800

Yups. there are ones even more condescending out there.

I really wish that the Playboy bunnies (and playboy magazine) were as classy as they were back then. We bought a few of the old magazines today actually- they had all of one pin up featured nothing gratuitous and no snatch shots. There really are a lot of articles and it was a men's magazine not just smut. Now I'm not a fan. When the club started they almost had a gesha-esq quality to them. Sure sex sells but it needn't be raunchy.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Purple Wyrm — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 02:47:14 -0800

#pyramidiocy

I was having a friendly argument with some friends today, and the subject seemed like a natural one for Whitechapel (ie: strange, a bit worrying and in the end utterly ridiculous). It is thus - if someone were to set off a nuclear warhead in the main chamber of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, what would happen?

Theories discussed included,

a) The pyramid would be utterly destroyed with chunks of rock raining down across Cairo
b) The core of the pyramid would be destroyed with the rest of the structure falling inwards
c) The structure would be thoroughly cracked and shaken, but more or less settle back into shape
d) The combination of nuclear force and mystical power would open a gateway into another universe (or at least summon Nyarlathotep)

Any thoughts fellow 'Chapelers?

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

JP Carpenter — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 03:12:32 -0800

#pyramidiocy

d).

Obviously.

Don't kids these days learn ANYTHING?

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

Kosmopolit — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 03:52:39 -0800

#pyramidiocy

If you mean the Royal Chamber, it's faced with granite but has several airshifts leading upwards.

Most of the blast would probably be deflected up along the shafts, most likey blowing much of the top off the pyrmaid and leaving the base more or less intact.

This depends on the size of the bomb obviously.

ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now Thread (Oct 17th - Nov 13th)

keyofsilence — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 04:14:20 -0800

#pyramidiocy

d), and the aliens would be super-pissed.

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TheEndsOfInvention — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 08:33:51 -0800

#pyramididiocy

[wikipedia RAMPAGE]

The Little Boy was 15 kilotons and detonated 2000m above Hiroshima, leveling every building in a 2 mile diameter.

Modern Trident missiles can fire warheads with a yield of up to 475 kilotons, and they don't pack just the one. They can load up to twelve independently targeted warheads per Trident.

If we're talking about just one of these, only 1/12th of it's potential power, that's still 30 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed an entire city from over a mile up... and submarines these days can carry anything up to 24 Tridents.

I don't think a few layers of sandstone would do anything at all.

I'd go for,

e) Pyramids - gone. Cairo - gone.

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256 — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 11:44:37 -0800

#pyramididiocy

What you're basically proposing is an overground underground nuclear test. Looking at the first underground nuclear test I came across: Sedan, 1962, was a 104kT bomb buried 200m down. You can find footage on Youtube.

The detonation lifted 11 million tonnes of earth and left a crater 100m deep and 320m wide (for scale, that loop at the bottom right is a road). By comparison, the Great Pyramid of Giza is estimated to weigh around 5.9 million tonnes.

I concur with @TEOI - I think you can safely say goodbye to the pyramid. Cairo probably wouldn't be a good place to be either.

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Purple Wyrm — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 16:34:14 -0800

#pyramididiocy

All exactly the kind of info I was looking for. I shall inform my friends to modify any insane plans they've formed appropriately ;D

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glukkake — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 09:28:42 -0800

#animereview

So i know I'm both reviving what should be a dead thread AND answering something that has already been resolved BUT, I watched this anime a few months ago and it was fantastic and took me a couple of days to get the name of it. In any case, I loved this movie so much (and I'm horribly judgemental of anime): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0831888/
Tekkonkinkreet

It's utterly fantastic and you all should watch it and now if it ever comes up I can search back into this thread because really, who the hell can remember a name like that?

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Greasemonkey — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:05:39 -0800

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oldhat — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:39:07 -0800

@glukkake I think I'll rent that tonight. Looks amazing.