I know I’ve mentioned The Quilting Bee here before, but I wanted to talk about it again. I first heard about it from Cricket, and I watched her work on her quilt for a long time before signing up myself. After I submitted my application I waited with bated breath for a few weeks - it turned out my initial application had gotten lost! When I was finally accepted, I was so excited. Since then, the QBee has become one of my favorite online activities. Since then I’ve learned a lot about pixel graphic design - it’s not easy for me, mostly because I’m simply not creative enough! But I have made several friends through the bee (Greetings especially to Heather, Manon, and Keskat!) and I love being part of a fun club. It amazes me that there are several hundred members of the bee…I have only met a small portion of the member list! So far the only person who has joined because of me is Ellie, but I’d like to encourage others to check out The Quilting Bee too…it’s a lot of fun! There are seasonal activities, contests, and games…in addition to the year-round fun of making new friends! (And yes, guys can join too, it’s not all girls!)

Ack! I was all set to use some of Illogirly’s lovely graphics in an attempt to make my own fall-themed layout, but they’re gone. Most of them were on StockStash, but that URL now leads to a poker site - I guess somebody didn’t renew the domain name. (At least it’s not a porn site, heh.) But I’d really like to play with slices and try making my own layout…does anybody know where to get those images? I remember some lovely fall Illogirly illustrations!

I was feeling a bit down tonight, so I escaped into pixels and made my first doll. I’ve been interested in dolling for a while, but I was never really into pixel art until I joined the Quilting Bee. Anyway, I figured I’d give a doll a try, and I’m reasonably pleased with the result. I used one of Wayuki’s bases and some tutorials at Watermelon Bubblegum plus knowledge I had in my head from previous investigations into this. Pixel shading didn’t work out for me, unfortunately. I also have yet to figure out shoes, partly because I’m not even sure what kind she should wear. But anyway, it was a good way to kill an hour or two. I’m still kind of down, but at least I made a doll, I guess.

I signed up for Buzznet a couple of weeks ago when I got my Sidekick, but I didn’t use it because I was a bit wary of it. I then forgot all about it until I saw Wil Wheaton’s posting of Crazy Old Walter (he’s going to be on CSI, yay!). I poked around for a minute or two and then promptly uploaded a slew of pictures that I’ve taken with my Sidekick. They’re all from my Flickr sidekick stream, but I didn’t upload the ones that have been locked to friends-only viewing on Flickr.

Now I’m trying to figure out what to do with the Buzznet gallery. I need to investigate the post-by-mail interface to determine if it’s more flexible than Flickr’s, and whether or not it allows posting direct from mail to an offsite blog. I also don’t know if any of my friends are on Buzznet - I have several contacts listed on Flickr, but the only people I have listed on Buzznet are Wil Wheaton and the extra account I made before I remembered the original account’s password (the nice tech support guy deleted it for me)!

Only a handful of people have asked me to take pictures so far. I haven’t taken all of them yet - each person requests three - but I’ve put a few of them online in a Flickr set. Here’s what I’ve done so far:

• Jizzybelly
  • A plant
  • An animal
  • My partner and I laughing
• gomer43
  • My current Palm
  • My computer workspace at home
  • My kitchen
• ratnix
  • My bumper stickers
  • A case of bedhead
  • Something distinctly DC
• Kymberlie
  • My watch
  • My favorite earrings
  • My favorite book

Everybody else is doing it, so why shouldn’t I? The most recent person I saw do this was Kymberlie, so I’m going to say I got it from her, although I did see others doing this a little while back. (Her first results came out pretty good, that’s why I suddenly have the urge to follow.)

Think of three pictures you’d like to see. Leave me a comment and tell me what you’d like. It should be things around my house, things around my workplace, or my car, or something else I can take a picture of easily. Once I have enough requests, I’ll start posting them. If I can’t (or won’t) take a picture of something you’ve requested, I’ll let you know, but for the most part anything is acceptable.

Hopefully this will get me using my digital camera a bit more! I haven’t done a photo meme since 26 Things.

deviantART is a wonderful collection of graphics, from wallpaper to skins to prints to all kinds of yummy goodness. One feature that paid members get and free members don’t is searching. I have been browsing through the photo manipulation wallpaper archives for a couple of weeks now, and I’m over the 9,000 mark. That means I have seen more than 9,000 wallpapers in that category alone. I really, really want to be able to search. I’d like to search for Hello Kitty, kayaking, Neopets, trains, all kinds of stuff. But I can’t, because I don’t have a paid membership.

At least…I didn’t. But now, thanks to the gracious Suki-, I am a deviantART subscriber! I had an Amazon gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket, and I was considering offering it in exchange for a DA membership. I was hoping for a three-month membership, which would mean $1.05 in “profit” for whoever bought it for me, in exchange for the certificate. I made the proposal, and Suki- actually offered me a membership…and let me keep the certificate! I am on cloud nine at the moment, and I can’t wait to dive into DA in more depth. Thank you, Suki-!

My eyes are burning, so I think it’s time to go to bed! But I wanted to note a couple of things first.

First, I created a LiveJournal account for those who want to receive updates about my icon gallery. I have more than 500 icons in there now, all free for use anywhere, but no way of keeping people notified about what’s new! The account is called woofie_icons (because my username on LiveJournal is woofiegrrl) and there is an RSS feed available.

Also, does anybody remember if there is a way to do a full-text search on Archive.org? I am trying to retrieve my columns published at Dykewrite, which seems to be permanently defunct. I’ve been browsing through all of Archive.org’s saved pages from *.dykewrite.com/* but it’s taking a long time. I’m skipping some of the single-entry pages, but I could very well be skipping over my own columns. I have found three or four of my own posts (from the original site) and articles (from the re-release) but I’m still trying to find the rest. I wish I’d saved them elsewhere - damn!

In response to Hanne’s post about sexual violence, I took her suggestion and created some items on Cafepress that say No Pity - No Shame - No Silence. They’re presently in the amanitadotnet shop, which I’ve never really used. Nobody has bought anything yet, but I’m hoping some graphic artists will want to work with me on this. (As if I needed another project!) By the way, all of the items are priced at Cafepress costs; I’m not trying to make a profit here. Hanne is a member of my family - she is my partner’s ex-husband’s fiancée, and we get to see them a little bit more frequently now than when they lived in Boston.

Finally, a non-computer related stumble! (I’ve been stumbling upon plenty of non-computer sites, but this is the first one I’ve wanted to share. Akiyoshi’s Illusion Pages carry a warning that they might make some viewers dizzy, but for those not prone to motion sickness they’re a lot of fun. As far as I can tell, nothing on the page is an animated image. They’re all optical illusions, and they really do appear to move right on the computer screen. There are also wallpapers to download, and some explanation of what’s going on in the images.