War.

War never changes.
All right comrades we're moving to a new battlefront.
A hoary veteran of the blog front like me just doesn't belong on the home front.
WELCOME...
TO DREAMWIDTH!
I know Livejournal has been bitching/praising/whatever this website since the start but I just couldn't give enough of a shit to investigate.
Well between battling this guy on the EVE Online market (and by "battling" I mean adjusting my price by one penny every time he lowers his price by a penny so I stay on top of the "lowest price" index) and feeling the life ebb from me I decided to check it out.
You'd think selling a cynosural field generator in the middle of fuck nowhere wouldn't be such a struggle but it is.
Imagine opening an orange stand in the middle of Nebraska in February only to find out there was an orange stand coincidentally right across the same stretch of road.
That's kind of what I'm dealing with.

 I actually have everything out for the German Underdress I was going to make for this weekend; however, I'm not going to Coronation. I really REALLY wish I could but I calculated out the costs and $400 (gas, hotel, and the site fee plus food) for a couple of days really just isn't in the budget right now. 

400 dollars.
I mean goddamn.
Who has that kind of money just sitting around?

Although I've pretty much given up on the Belle German Gown, I will work on the underdress for it since it will work for any future Saxon outfit. I'm not happy about it but I need to be practical right now. I hate being practical. :-p

This is a hobby a lot of people seem to have in the blogging world.
Historical dress recreation.

My Dad and I had a very interesting conversation the other day that involved costuming and Hollywood that I thought the rest of you might like/want to comment on: Dad has noticed that the use of color in movies has changed drastically with the advent of digital filming. As he points out, most movies in the past ten years have a "gray scale" rather than the vivid colors we see in the old Technicolor movies, such as the Wizard of Oz.

I appreciate a restrained color palette myself.
I think it gives more of a vision to the frame.

He was curious as to why many directors seem to have forgotten the importance of color in storytelling with only a very even thinking about the color palette for costuming. I pointed out that Marie Antoinette certainly used the colors of the costumes and props to further the story (despite my not liking the movie. I know. I'm the only one.) Dad hasn't seen it (I told him to put it on mute and just listen to 80's music while watching it) but found the concept interesting.

So, can y'all think of any movies this century that use color, particularly in the costuming, to help tell the story?

Sin City comes to mind.
Also wouldn't limiting your color selection be as much thought as using a fucking rainbow diarrhea explosion of color?
Like at some point someone has to say "and fuck red for this movie" or something.
Oh, also: Hero.
That was another movie where color figured heavily into the story.
Although quite what it represented symbolically I'm still not sure.
At first I thought they were going for a "four seasons" motif until we hit winter because it was supposed to metaphorically represent this guy's life but then we went to blue and white so fuck if I know.
Guess they just did it because it looked cool.
And I know white symbolizes death in a lot of Asian cultures. I'm not an idiot but when Jet Li's character finally got pin cushioned by arrows he was wearing black so go figure that out.
Great movie though.
Recommend it wholeheartedly.

When I made the purple wool thread with a hand spindle, it took two freakin' years! (Of course, it wasn't all at once. I'd do a small bit, get bored, leave the spindle for a week or so, and get back to it but it took forever!) This white yarn I just made that is slightly too thick for crewel thread? Two hours. I like the spinning wheel.

I won't be impressed until you're actually shearing sheep you raise for their wool. 

Yes, m'dear. I understand how to search. Yes, I know sellers are no longer allowed to use certain characters in their titles - that's not the issue. The issue is that the * wildcard for Boolean searches -something that has pretty much been around since ya know, the internet- doesn't work anymore and I want to know why. Yes, m'dear. I know. If you put in strawberr* into the search bar items will come up - that doesn't mean it works. 

I don't know what world you live in where that doesn't work.
Or where you have to regularly do that.
Most search engines are sophisticated enough for you to be able to put 14 Qs and an X in your word and it'll still figure it out.

Rather, look at the search results, see? It ignored the * and looked for strawberr of which, for some odd reason, there are 53 items on ebay with that very not-word in the title. I realize by using words like Boolean I've probably confused you -

You know for someone that can't work a Boolean operator you sure are patronizing.

I used to be able to do Boolean searches using the wildcard *. It helped a lot and I'm highly disappointed to see it gone. Now, rather than simply searching for "strawberr*" to get both strawberries and strawberry, I need to conduct two separate searches to find the same item. Unfortunately, people do not think a like so a strawberry print pillow case could be either strawberries pillow case or strawberry pillow case.

I think 99% of people would say "strawberry pillowcase".
Also note pillowcase is one word.
That might also be some of your problem.
Also holy God you have to do two searches?
Jesus fuck the lord Christ two internet searches?
Yeah 30 years ago you'd have to go to garage sales until someone just happened to be selling whatever kinky bondage shit you freaks buy.

I doubt they'll listen but if you want to complain as well, at the bottom of every ebay page, there is a "Tell us what you think" link. Click it. Complain. I've been mad at them since they "hid" buyers names (um, how am I to know I'm not bidding against a friend or a museum or a horrible reseller that takes apart gowns just to sell the trim?) but I think I'm at the point where, the vast majority of my shopping might head over to etsy and artfire.

Bidding against a friend?
In the history of eBay has that ever happened?
Also not bidding against a museum?
Are you seriously that much of a putz you wouldn't bid against a museum?
Christ in EVE Online I'll bid more than I intend to if I know I'm bidding against someone I know.
Fierce competition keeps us all sharp, you know.
IN EVE ONLINE WE ARE ALL FORGED IN THE FIRES OF WAR.

 I actually finished my steampunk outfit for later today yesterday. :-) 

I know I've shit on steampunk a lot (in fact it's all I've ever done when commenting on steampunk) but can I take a moment to say how grateful I am to steampunk?

Thank you so much for attracting all the women so they'll leave the one true literary genre, cyberpunk, alone.

Rather than working on anything I *should* be working on, I wanted to work on making an 18th C hat. I haven't actually made one before -

Can you believe in the year 2013 the most advanced form of body armor is layers of ballistic weave and rigid ceramic plates over top?
It doesn't even look cool.
Not even one suit of power armor.
Oh sure there's a power exoskeleton that almost works in some limited situations but not a single suit of power armor.
Instead the company that seems to be the closest company to what I envision for the future is wasting all their time on this creepy looking motherfuck.
I know that's from 2008 but in 5 years it has just gotten a lot bigger and can now stop itself from falling over.
It looks really creepy when it's stumbling, incidentally.
It still makes that horrible whining noise, though.
They intend to use this thing to transport materials over terrain where a truck wouldn't work.
I think the insurgency might hear you coming.
I know this has nothing to do with this blog but frankly I don't care about Elizabethan dresses.
... Not sure why I felt the need to qualify that.
It was probably taken for granted that I don't care about Elizabethan dresses.

I'm entering a photo contest at work. Basically, anyone that works for our company can enter their photos to be displayed in our Maryland offices. I've never been to the new Maryland offices (I think they are just across the very busy street from where I really work but I'm not sure) but it still would be cool to say my photos are being displayed somewhere. I've entered about 8 photographs so far but if there is one in my flickr album that anyone really likes and thinks I should submit, please, let me know!

I went to Hobby Lobby Friday after work to get some fleece for the middle child and baby's Halloween outfits.

Maryland has Hobby Lobbies now?
TRULY THESE ARE BLACK TIMES.

I got Mom the American Duchess Astoria shoes in black a few months ago when American Duchess had some irregulars on sale. Mom had mentioned that she liked those in particular and I knew that, at least with that style, she could wear them to work or to other functions and not just as historical wear. She LOVES the shoes. Thank goodness they fit! (Pictures later)

You will doubtless be disappointed to learn there are no pictures.
Sorry foot fetishists~

Should you ever have the issue where you want to upload a movie on iTunes to your iPod and, for some reason, can't; just go update Quicktime. Eject your iPod, shut down iTunes, make sure Quicktime is running smoothly and the movie will, most likely, upload to your iPod. This will save a couple of days worth of frustration after getting those "Movie" is not compatible with "Your iPod" iPod device errors.

Or you could manually convert and dump it straight into the hidden "movies" directory on your iPod.
That's what I did the one time I wanted video on my iPod.
Quicktime was, is and will always be a piece of shit.

I am greatly displeased that the gray Hello Kitty "I'm posting this!" t-shirt did not come in my size. They only had small and medium but it was Asian small and medium which doesn't quite work with my proportions.

Yes.
Her proportions.
Because Asian girls are small chested, typically, and she's buxom.
Not a fatass, okay.

Mom and Debbie (my cousin/aka "West Coat Mom") are going to the Garment/Fabric district in L.A. this Saturday to buy me silk. They would like to know if there is any specific stores they should try for my silk taffeta and silk dupioni. 

Reminds me of a weird period in FFXIV where I was one of about 10 people that could successfully dye linen.
Those were busy and lucrative days.

An 18th Century Italian figurine wearing what looks to be a Turkish style coat with some 18th Century "peasant" elements beneath it. Very cool! (And helpful for those doing 18th C Turkish Outfits. ;-) )

All none of you.

This is an English question that has been bugging me for some time. I know the rule of thumb is that if the word begins with a vowel, then you use "an". However, if the word begins with a consonant, you use "a". Hence, you get, "an apple" or "a grape". 

That's not really how the rule works but okay.
If the consonant is silent (as in the American pronunciation of "herb" or something) then it's still "an herb".
The rule is more about the first vocalized sound.

Now, there are two words I can think of off the top of my head that do not follow this rule. Hour is certainly one since, although "h" is a consonant, it is also silent so we say "an hour". I get that one. The one I do not get is USB. 

First, USB isn't a word. It's an acronym. It stands for "universal service bus". Second, you don't say "oosbuh" or something. You say "yoo-ess-bee" in which case the first sound is a y sound which isn't a vowel in this case.
So the answer is "a USB."

I saw it written the other day as "a USB" and realized that that is how it's said but I'm not sure why. Is it because it is an acronym? Does anyone know the answer or hazard a guess?

I mean I'm not giving you shit because you're trying to learn but this is really kind of elementary to figure out.

I have some sort of stupid head cold today. Grr. I'm taking something for it but I had to come home and crash for five hours.

I have cold now.
Can you believe that shit?
Fucking
the flu
and a cold in the same year.
Bullshit I tell you.
Anyway I'm going fuck it.