YCH ("your character here") commissions.

"Oh, look, I drew more abstract smut. Your character could be in this position, and this position, and this position! Pay for the privilege of feeling special with other complete strangers as I create a permanent public record for the entire world to see!"

The problem is, 99% of the time, I find these kinds of scenes/arrangements to be incredibly tacky, kitschy, unimaginative, uninteresting eyesores. There are a variety of artists that I used to like more when they didn't do these. I still like some of their newer art, but their now ever-present YCH commissions are virtually always by far their least interesting works. I can understand if the driving interest is money for paying rent, buying groceries, etc., but there has got to be a way to get paid without blighting your gallery with YCH eyesore after YCH eyesore. Take more picture commissions. Accept commissions for multi-page comics and charge more money for them. Perhaps even do what  spelunkersal does and do paid art "slave" streams where you draw whatever the client asks you to for a paid set period of time. But please, please spare us from the YCH!

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/02/2.....ust-two-years/

This has implications not only for infertile couples, but for same-sex couples who want biological children. If medically variable eggs and sperm can be grown from stem cells, we can actually have children with either no male parent or no female parent. However, the children of two male parents would still need a female gestational carrier.

Well, without going into too many details (medication names, conditions being treated, etc.), I was prescribed a new medication, and took my first dose.

But I soon felt very noticeably depressed - so much so that I instantly knew it didn't have an emotional cause. And apparently, sudden depression is one of those symptoms for which I have to contact a doctor immediately. So we're going to contact the doctor and tell them what happened, and I'm probably not going to be taking this medication again.

Meanwhile, I feel like a zombie. When the depression hit, I just wanted to crawl into bed and never get out. My motivation to do stuff crashed to zero. Every little thing became mentally painful. And I didn't feel a reason to feel these things, with the only difference being the new medication. I ended up taking a nap for hours, waking up, still feeling bad, and trying to do anything just to keep my life going. I cooked some food, I had some chocolate, I listened to music, I continued working on some hobby projects. But I cannot escape the overwhelming feeling that I am not well.

I also looked online, comparing this new medication with my existing treatments, and they have a huge number of well-documented interactions. Wonderful. And you'd think my different doctors should be trading notes on things like this, or appreciate the potential severity of what I may be getting into. To their credit, they did run a blood test to check my liver function before prescribing me this medication (which turned out okay). But pronounced mental side-effects? I had at best only the vaguest notion they were even possible with these meds until after I took my first and so far only dose; I had skimmed the notes they gave me, mainly looking for dosing instructions. But when things started to quickly go bad, I found myself reading the notes more thoroughly, and then going online as ended up doing.

...I'm not even certain I'm structuring my journal entry in a clear manner. I just feel like some serious blah, and I would very much like it to be over with.

It's Election Day!

Since I was a teenager, I had a mild form of type 2 diabetes called prediabetes. But my most recent health checkup reports that, due to improvements in the way I eat, all diabetic condition is apparently completely gone? I didn't know it was possible to cure any kind of type 2 - my mother always told me that it remains with you for the rest of your life. I never expected to start getting healthier as I approached middle age.

If that was intentional, I wonder if they expected it to go over most people's heads. :P

Sometimes, I like to write user scripts for the browser, to improve website experiences. This is strictly a hobby, usually only for my own use, and I don't do it professionally or on request.

Once upon a time I wrote one of these for FurAffinity. It was back when FurAffinity's CDN servers had similar filenames for both full submissions and for thumbnails, so it was trivial to programmatically convert from one to the other.

When FA switched to a new thumbnail filename format so that it doesn't share a naming pattern with the submission files, my script broke. To get it to work again, I would have had to prefetch every submission HTML page involved, just to parse the URL of the full submission. This seemed like overkill, as it would have not only have skewed submission statistics (adding hits for pages not visited in-person), but it would have greatly increased the bandwidth of requests by fetching the complete comments attached with each page. In the face of this, I abandoned the script and moved on to greener programming pastures.

In the light of the recent brutal DDOS attack FurAffinity sustained, I realized something funny. If I had continued to develop such a script, and distributed it online for others to install and use, and it were to become really popular, then the script itself - while not causing a full-fledged DDOS itself - would certainly not have helped FA's server bandwidth concerns in the long run.

These are some of the cost-benefit analyses we consider as user script programmers. We all love more convenient and more streamlined delivery of media on demand, but many of the arbitrary limits sites impose on our site access (at least by default), are almost certainly bandwidth-saving measures. Does this mean I'll stop trying to write useful user scripts that use relatively more bandwidth? Of course not - if the benefit is good enough. But when the bandwidth cost is higher, I am all the more reluctant to publish my user scripts.

This has got to be the coolest, gayest, funkiest, awesomest version of this song I've ever heard! :D

I turned 34 years old today, May 29. It's not really the best day for a family gathering, so no cake today. But I did get the Special Edition Director's Cut of Frank Herbert's Dune miniseries on DVD, so all is well for now. :3

http://media-c3.co.jp/Application/N.....Crash/english/

I've been wanting a mobile version of this game so much. And damn it's good. It's obviously not running in a Flash container - the animation and media quality are much better than the Flash version.

In regards to this chiptune submission I made, I finally figured out how to export it to a proper NSF that plays back successfully. The download link to the FTM, NSF and NES ROM formats are in the description area of the submission page.

I appear to be sick with...some kind of virus. I feel physically weak and achy. And my blood sugar symptoms seem to have otherwise completely cleared up. This makes me think that what the hospital told me was true - this was a combination of a really poor eating decision with the bad timing of the onset of a seasonal viral illness. I'm embarrassed that it laid bare my occasional tendency to binge eat on sweets, because I too often lack impulse control if they're within reach. I have a serious sugar addiction. So, I had already resolved to stop buying cookies and Ritter Sport bars at least for the next week, but it appears I'll have to lay off sweets for a while anyway because I'm sick. I'm especially embarrassed at paying that emergency room co-pay over this - a poor eating choice with especially bad timing. But I suppose that's why they call them "emergencies."

First, the backstory.
For the past several years I've been trying hard to eat healthier.
When I was diagnosed prediabetic in 2002, I decided to cut out the highest glycemic foods like doughnuts, cake and cookies, though cake eventually came back for special occasions like birthdays.
A few years ago I was diagnosed with dangerously high triglycerides, so I switched to a largely low-fat diet. No more alfredo, seldom any fried foods, and low-fat ice cream.
Since I have a lifelong sugar addiction, I've tried to space out my sweets too - trying not to eat too many at once or too many in a day, and spacing them between healthy high-protein meals. if
When I got my new smartphone in January, I started to fill out the tellsubway.com questionnaire in-store whenever I ate at Subway regularly twice a week. My reward was a cookie, and much of the time (since I filled out the questionnaire without leaving the store) they gave me two. I try to eat only one cookie, and put the other in a plastic bag in the refrigerator to eat it the next day.
And when I go grocery shopping, I buy Ritter Sport chocolate bars - these big bars of 16 pieces that can be split into three servings. But I have a bad habit of eating an entire bar at once. I used to buy three bars a week. But after eating them too fast too often, I now only buy two bars a week. And after still eating them too quickly, I started putting them in the kitchen cabinet after I bought them, and trying to eat them at least over a few days.

Yesterday (Saturday) was my regular grocery shopping day, when I went to eat at Subway then buy groceries. My inner voice of wisdom told me to save the cookies for later, but...I ate them both before shopping was over. I bought the two Ritter Sport bars, and that same inner voice told me to put them in the cupboard out of easy reach so I could judiciously have them later, but...I took them into my bedroom with me. After an hour I had eaten one of the bars. Then an hour or so later (about midnight) I had eaten the other. Soon I had the familiar symptoms of a blood sugar spike - nausea, tremors, cold sweats and a pounding heartbeat. Normally if this happens, I lie down flat in a blanket for greatest comfort, and ride out the symptoms until my blood sugar dips the other way, and then I take care of it.

But this time, the high blood sugar symptoms persisted for hours. Deep into the wee hours of the night. And I felt no more comfortable, and it felt really serious. I texted my dad and told him the symptoms. At first he was angry for being woken up, and told me to drink water and flush it out of my system. Then, looking up on webmd about high blood sugar, I read about another symptom - sweet-smelling breath, which would mean diabetic ketoacidosis which really is a medical emergency. I woke up my dad again to smell my breath, and he said it smelt normal, and went back to bed. A few minutes later, he came back and apologized for being cranky (I had woken him up in the middle of the night, afterall), and asked if I needed to go to the emergency room. I wasn't sure. But after a little while, he said he would take me to the emergency room, and I reluctantly agreed.

I felt so ashamed. I kept saying "I screwed up" and "I'm so sorry," until he told me that that part is passed. We arrived at the ER, I was brought to one of their waiting rooms, and I was told to sit on the bed. I went through my symptoms (I've been to the ER before for completely different things, so I kinda knew what to do), and they read my blood sugar (it was a little high), and they drew more blood to test, and connected me to a heart monitor. They then connected me to an IV, gave me fluids, and drugs to relieve my symptoms and bring my blood sugar back down. I had gone in there expecting to be told I have full-blown type 2 diabetes, but they told me they didn't think it was that bad yet. I was released after a good hour, and went back to bed, feeling very embarrassed and still kinda crummy.

I just woke up, and the first thing I ate was a protein bar. I'm still uncomfortable, but it feels more under control than it did before. I just need to eat high-protein, low-sugar foods, drink enough water, and get some rest, and inform someone if I have any other serious symptoms.

Yes, I know lots of people have been leaving FA over the new staff hiring, and they're mostly moving to Weasyl - I'm already on Weasyl, but I have nothing uploaded there, and I don't plan on leaving FA anytime soon. Frankly, I've seen much worse drama than this. I know the new staff member was once accused of sexual improprieties - unless there's a formal trial verdict, I have no opinion. Yes, I know it's a serious grievous crime when it happens. No, I don't find hysterics all that productive - as someone with anxiety disorder, I prefer calm patient reason, and I try to have less hysterical moments if I can help it. Besides, I can't vouch for other users, but the FA staff have generally been fair and reasonable with me in my handful of dealings with them.

But everything's okay.

...damn, one minute too late.

Posted here, in the comments section of this Salt Lake Tribune article I linked in my previous journal entry.

Perhaps Justice Scalia should take a cue from the Miranda warning, but edited for his particular situation:

* You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in another judge's court of law.
* You have the right as a judge to refrain from stating legal interpretations that come back to bite you in the rear.
* If you cannot afford this restraint, no time machine will be appointed to undo your actions.
* If you decide to opine now, without restraint present, you will still have the right to stop opining before you give yourself just enough rope to hang yourself.
* Knowing and understanding your rights as you very well should have already known as a justice, are you willing to shut your trap when LGBT rights advocates are listening?

Here is another article for specific context on how Scalia contributed to the legal precedent that legalized same-sex marriage in Utah. Utah's case before Shelby was already so weak, but Scalia is the gift that keeps on giving.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/5.....legal.html.csp

I'm shocked this happened so quickly. I thought Utah would be one of the last states for this to happen. But no. New Mexico, then here in Utah. Wow. Yay for equality! :3

I really have to vent this, because while things are okay now, I'm still rather shaken and can't pretend it didn't happen.

Last night, I was awoken to the ruckus of my sister trying to bring my dad to after his fall. I had flashbacks to June 2012, when my mom fell in the same room while having a stroke, and had to be taken to the emergency room - she never returned. While the initial panic was the same, last night's events proved practically opposite of what happened to her. My dad collapsed...from low blood pressure. He's been taking medication to treat high blood pressure, but apparently last night there was a moment when it was too low, and he fainted. We called 911, and my dad physically had nothing wrong seriously with him - he'd just fallen. One of his heels was sore, presumably from where he stomped on the floor trying to regain his balance. They offered to take him to the emergency room in an ambulance, but my dad was already in very good condition, so instead he was driven normally by car to the hospital to be checked out. He was quickly released that night, and went home normally in good health. But he decided, just in case, to stay home from work today and take it easy. And so far, he's still in great condition. It was just a big scare that my sexagenarian dad had fallen and needed to go to the hospital. My panic of that night faded quickly for me, and I was able to go back to sleep when it became clear my dad would be fine. And other than not going to work and using one of my mom's old canes to help keep his weight off his sore heel, it's life as normal.

And really, I guess that's how my dad has always been different from my mom. My mom had chronic health problems for years. And after she had her stroke, terminal diagnosis and months in hospice, it was actually something of a relief when she passed on, because she was no longer hurting all the time anymore. But my dad has always been fairly physically active, in generally good health, and at 69 still appears more youthful than his younger siblings that haven't aged as gracefully. My dad expects to continue to live for at least a few decades to come, and lives life with the youthful spirit of a teenager.

In fact, we comforted each other with the realization that some of my siblings and I had had fainting spells before as teenagers for whatever random reasons, and while my dad never fainted when he was younger than twenty (or tenteen), he certainly fainted this time at the tender age fiftynineteen, and is part of our club of teenage fainters. I mean really - for the past several months we were concerned about his high blood pressure, and he had completely cut out salt and was taking blood pressure meds. But for all that concern, he fainted because his blood pressure was too low. ...I found that ironically encouraging, and so did some of my siblings.

Too often, whenever I feel a moment of fondness and nostalgia for the Wild Arms series, I feel like I'm the only one in Filgaia who still likes it enough to give it any kind of mention. I know there hasn't been a new Wild Arms game since 2007, and there's no cause for excitement. Also, I confess I haven't played any Wild Arms game of substance since Wild Arms 3, and that's because even then I felt a dearth of fellow Wild Arms ga(y)mers to appreciate it with. Fandom loneliness is a difficult thing, no matter how much you love something.

There were issues with the trumpets. On closer inspection, I noticed some glaring errors with note lengths. I also balanced the two trumpets against each other, and made the expression (channel-relative velocity) more subtle. I've reuploaded new versions of both the .mid and .mp3 files.

Happy Samhain for everyone in the Northern Hemisphere.
Happy Beltane for everyone in the Southern Hemisphere.
^____________^

Four mysterious giants arrived to catch the moon and save our world, reportedly thanks to a mysterious young hero first seen 16 days ago.

...Yeah, this was all about the debt ceiling vote. :P But Majora's Mask has generously provided the internet with a fountain of useful quirky memes. :3

I also whipped up this submission earlier today. It was so damn cathartic.