firehose

Random thoughts about freelancing:

Freelancing is not super easy. Like, growing up I was given the impression that writers and such got paid well and lived a life of ease, just creating. How cool did that sound, right? Well, turns out it's mostly bullshit.

I say mostly because you do get to create, and that part is awesome. The pay is, depending on where you go, anywhere from abysmal to decent, unless you have a Name and Reputation and GET LUCKY. From what I've seen so far, anyway.

I've been suuuuper lucky to find a place with a few different companies and people. The first one didn't really go as I'd hoped, so I moved on. Luckily, there were people who supported me, and I found a place to do my first paid, published work through The Fate Codex. This was super cool. It also led to my current work with MWP, and eventually to work with Onyx Path and Evil Hat.

One thing I didn't expect was the impact my health would have on freelancing. I thought that working from home and freelancing was something you could always do, no matter how sick you were. I was totally freaking wrong, like, get out of here, so wrong. Not only did I lose a lot of time when I had a mental break (for lack of a better term), but I've also lost a lot of time due to an injury.

tastefullyoffensive:

The National Galleries [x]

brianmichaelbendis:

The Silver Surfer by Kilian Eng, 2013

transitmaps:

Historical Map: Theoretical Diagram of Proposed Transit System, St. Louis, Missouri, 1919

Here’s a map that hyperrealcartography would love: an audacious, almost outrageous, proposal for a transit system in St. Louis drawn up by the City Plan Commission in 1919. The final proposed system shown here would have had the existing streetcars and new rapid transit lines operating side-by-side, described like this in the full proposal:

"The rapid transit system is separated into two distinct systems, that for the routing of surface cars in the downtown district, and that for a distinctly rapid transit system that would operate entirely by subway or elevated tracks within the city. There will be no contact of the two systems, excepting that the stations may be operated in common."

Under this proposal, almost every major street in the city would have had streetcar service. Many of the east-west routes (top to bottom on this diagram) would have funnelled towards new subway loops under the business district, which would have required the total abandonment of the 8th Street railway tunnel (now used by the Metrolink light rail). Seven crosstown lines would have provided comprehensive service for those wishing to bypass downtown.

Note that this is very definitely a theoretical diagram of the system, not a map. Even a very cursory glance at St. Louis in Google Maps reveals that the city’s actual layout is nowhere near as uniform and compliant as this.

The cost for this little project? Around $97 million in 1919: equating to a cool $1.1 billion in today’s money.

Source: Gateway Streets/Flickr

P.S. The entire proposal is scanned and available to read on Google Books: definitely worth a look if you’re interested in early 20th-century city planning.

 

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Sadly, this isn't from an official Simpsons title sequence, because now we really want to watch an animated Bart bike through Neo-Springfield.

Read more...

britishtoatea:

I have literally been waiting for this gifset for all time

Thousands and thousands of people from over 30 countries descended on Brazil. Many of them are continuing to swipe right. These are their stories.

Perhaps you're familiar with Tinder, the app that allows you to look at pictures of people of your gender of choice and swipe, indicating that you would like to have sex, date, or, yeah, hahahahahahaha, sure, be friends with them.

Anyway, it selects people based on their geographic proximity to you. This is great news for all the Tinder users heading to Brazil for the World Cup -- and all the Brazilian Tinder users who now have a fresh crop of people to look at. (Only having sex with Brazilians sounds like it would get tiring, oh, just about never, but apparently it does.)

Anyway, that's what inspired Tinder Na Copa, this Tumblr by a Brazilian woman with screenshots of people in town for the World Cup, some of whom advertise their World Cup visitors status right up front.

The Cup ain't half over yet, and it already has over 600 posts. Some might say that this is putting people on blast for using Tinder when they might not want their pictures showing up on the Internet. Rather, we hope to salute these International Tinder Voyagers. That said, if your boyfriend is in Brazil for the World Cup and you see him on there, we're glad to have helped you catch that punk

USA Today reports that Brazil has the third-highest number of Tinder users.

submitted by drunkengeebee [link] [150 comments]

  

Illustration by Tuesday Bassen

At key points in our tour together, the Editorially founders have gathered for a meal. We shared oysters and lobster rolls when we first came together as a team; pasta, bread, and wine when we closed on funding; sticky chicken wings and Thai noodles when our far-flung colleagues joined us in New York; burgers and Manhattans when we shared the news of the shutdown with the world. And just last week we got together again, this time for steak and whole fish to celebrate the newest chapter: the three of us are joining the product team at Vox Media.

For us, this represents a continuation of work we started even before Editorially got off the ground. Each of us has roots in digital publishing and the editorial workflow: David was part of the digital media team at Hearst, where he helped build a content management system serving dozens of magazines. Jason is both cofounder and creative director of A Book Apart, and for seven years he served as creative director at A List Apart; he also pioneered art direction on the web, and was a direct influence on the Vox Media team’s work to design original, longform stories. Mandy is also cofounder and former editor-in-chief of A Book Apart — where she commissioned and edited the canonical Responsive Web Design — a former editor for A List Apart, and former creative director at the renowned publisher W. W. Norton & Company. Each of us has spent years thinking hard about how to make digital publishing the best experience for readers, writers, designers, and developers alike, and we are eager to continue to put that experience to work.

And Vox Media is the perfect place for us to do just that. Long hailed for their commitment to innovative publishing technology, Vox Media has a well-deserved reputation for pushing the limits of digital publishing. From a cultural and political history of American arcades to a brave investigation into the ethics of facial transplants, and from fervent tech reviews to a tale of soccer that reaches back to the Byzantine empire, few publishers have pushed storytelling on the web further. Just as critically, they’ve worked hard to design a platform that enables their team to productively experiment with different story forms — from longform pieces to quick dispatches, story streams, and the new card stacks. And they’ve simultaneously built technology to support advertising campaigns which are genuinely valuable to readers and brands alike — digital publishing’s holy grail.

And yet, there’s still work to be done. Chorus, the Vox Media stack, is an impressive suite of tools, but like anything on the web, it will never be finished. One goal, among those the team has identified for this year, stands out: a commitment to evolving the editorial workflow. That workflow encompasses everything from short posts written by sports fans to deeply researched and edited pieces; from articles that are mostly words to those that prominently feature video and interactive graphics; and from work that originates in the many Vox Media editorial teams to work from their in-house agency, Vox Creative. With over 1600 contributors and more than 300 editorial teams working over the past seven years, they’ve developed a robust suite of tools for carrying a story from idea to draft to published. But to be successful, digital publications must do more than permit a story to come together — they must also empower the kind of prolific, creative collaboration required to bring off stories that can seduce even the most distracted readers.

As it happens, we have a few ideas about that.

At Editorially, we spent a lot of time thinking about how to empower writers, editors, and designers to work together: features such as version control, activity feeds, and discussion threads were designed to stitch together the various stages of the editorial process and allow everyone involved to work more productively. In recent months, we’ve talked in detail about that work with Trei Brundrett, Vox Media’s chief product officer, and many of his talented colleagues. And together we hatched a plan for the three Editorially founders to join Vox Media and lead a team that will look hard at the editorial workflow across all of the Vox Media publications. In Trei’s parlance, we’re going to put the editorial workflow on a rocket ship and see where it takes us.

In addition to bringing the three of us into the fold, Vox Media is also acquiring the technology behind Editorially. We know many people have asked what we have planned for the Editorially codebase; happily, we can now report that we and the Vox Media team agree that the best thing for everyone is to share as much as we can. Together, we’re going to identify the most sensible way to release parts of the code via an open source license, so that others can learn from and build on our work. Look for details on that in the months ahead.

That said, while Vox Media is acquiring the Editorially technology, they are not acquiring our user data. Absolutely no user data — no names, email addresses, documents, or any other user data — will be transferred to Vox Media. That data remains in the hands of the Editorially founders and will be deleted at the end of the year (after enough time has passed to ensure that all users have been able to retrieve their documents).

The Editorially service will not return. We know some have expressed dismay at the loss of Editorially and may have even publicly hoped for a phoenix-like rebirth. Alas, that is not to be. That said, if you are among those still grieving for Editorially, we are hopeful that in the long run we will be able to console you in other ways. We remain unspeakably grateful to those who supported us, both before and after we announced the shutdown, and promise to keep you in our hearts as we approach the work ahead.

As for that: this afternoon we’ll board a train and head down to Philadelphia, where we’ll join the rest of the Vox Product team for their annual hack week. The last few months have given us time to rest and reflect, but now there’s nothing we want more than to get down to work. To the many friends and supporters who’ve stood by us during this time: thank you, again and again. To our new colleagues: onward!

comicsalliance:

DC’S NEW CREATOR PAYMENT PLAN PUTS DIGITAL COMICS ON PAR WITH PRINT, OFFERS COLORISTS ROYALTIES

By Matt D. Wilson

A letter from DC Comics Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee to the company’s freelancers has outlined a new payment policy that offers royalties to the creators of digital-first comics and colorists (previously, payments just a flat rate), and changes the structure of how all creators are paid. The new plan, which will supplant a policy that has been in place for more than 30 years, goes into effect July 1 and is a direct response to a recent survey DC took of its talent pool.

Specifically, payments (DC doesn’t use the term “royalties” because that implies ownership) will soon be based on net revenue — how much money a book makes after costs — rather than on the cover price. That gives DC “more flexibility to sell our material in new distribution channels that have different pricing models,” according to the letter obtained by ComicsAlliance. That seems to point to digital comics and possible experimentation with pricing there.

So is this a positive or a negative for creators? That’s a little harder to suss out.

One group that will definitely benefit is colorists. The new plan offers up royalty payments and cover credits to colorists, neither of which they got previously — at least, not regularly (DC has often credited colorists on the covers of original graphic novels). According to a few past and present DC employees and freelancers we’ve spoken to, offering those benefits to colorists has been discussed internally for years.

READ MORE

HUGE for colorists. And way overdue.

mattfractionblog:

i love to laugh

Peanut, a rescue dog who survived being set on fire as a puppy won the dubious distinction of being the “World’s Ugliest Dog” for 2014 at the Sonoma Marin Fair. Peanut’s human, Holly Chandler of Greenville, South Carolina, has said that she entered Peanut in ugly dog contests in order to raise awareness around the subject of animal abuse.

Chandler wants to use the national contest as a platform to bring awareness to animal abuse and the damage that it can cause. “It will not be about winning or losing. It will solely be about telling people his story and showing that we cannot stick our heads in the sand,” said Chandler. “Animal abuse happens, it is time to face it and come together to stop it.” Because of the fire, “Peanut” lost his lips so his teeth show, and his eyes don’t close because his eyelids were burned. She said many people have called her dog hideous, and she gets disgusting looks when they are out in public. But Chandler says after lots of love and understanding, “Peanut” is now a happy and healthy dog.- WITN 7

via reddit, WITN 7, Neatorama

The retro-futuristic animated music video for the song “She Is Young, She Is Beautiful, She Is Next” by Perturbator follows the slightly surreal journey of a silent protagonist as they make their way through a dystopia. The video, which is evocative of classic video games, was directed by Jarkko Kinnunen and Sami Rämä.

via Josh Sawyer

fsql:

fsql lets you perform SQL queries against “flat” files of various formats. Each file will be regarded as a SQL table.

Supported formats include CSV, JSON and YAML.

Shoulder pauldrons are one of those cosplay accessories that can be worn with multiple ensembles. They’re ideal for renaissance faire outfits, but you could also make a pauldron for something like a Wonder Woman costume. Instructables user The Rambler decided to make his own pauldron and include three segments, and it looks like a basic and simple project. Gathering supplies might be the hardest part of it. He used 4-6 ounce weight leather, but you can adjust that based on how thick you want your pauldron to be. In addition to leather, he gathered buckles, rivets, stain, a leather punch, rivet setter, and knife. He then transferred the below pattern to the leather and start punching holes to for the segments:

Each of the main segments needs four holes; one punched in each corner… or at least sort of in each corner. In the third picture (and also the first picture in the last step) you can see how the rivets at the bottom of each piece are placed in the corners but the rivets at the top of the two bottom pieces are placed further down. They need to be slightly offset so that the armor plates won’t swivel completely around, but will instead flex a little before catching on each other (see what I mean in the second picture).

Four of the straps needed a hole punched for them to attach to the pauldron. That part was pretty straightforward. Three of them required a buckle to be attached on the other end. For that I needed to cut a slot for the buckle prong to fit through and then punch a hole on either side for the rivet. I also used my knife to skive the leather thinner where it would fold over on itself. Then I had to add holes to the fourth strap as well as the long strap for the belt prong to hook into.

Read more at Instructables.

This little piggy went to market,
This little piggy stayed home.
This little piggy had roast beef,
This little piggy had none.

… and this little piggy went boing-boing roll-roll tumble-thud I-meant-to-do-that all the way over her big brother.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: GIF of the Week, Pigs, Pups

Last time we told you about Netflix’s upcoming sci-fi limited series Sense8, a collaboration between the Wachowski siblings and Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski, we were excited, because intriguing plot about a diverse group of people sharing some mysterious mental connection! But we were also a little apprehensive, because let’s avoid the “Magical Negro” trope, please and thank you. The new info we have neither confirms nor denies that Sense8 goes down that path—we’ll have to wait for the actual show for that—but it does help on the excitement front. We’re looking at alumni from Doctor Who, Lost, Stargate Universe, and more, plus a synopsis provided by Straczynski.

Deep breath. The cast is: Daryl Hannah, Naveen Andrews (Lost), Brian J. Smith (Stargate Universe), Freema Agyeman (Martha!!!!), Tuppence Middleton (Jupiter Ascending), Aml Ameen (The Butler), Terrence Mann (The Dresden Files), and relative newcomer Jamie Clayton. We’re also looking at a large non-American-or-British cast in Indian actress Tena Desae, South Korean actress Donna Bae (who co-starred in the Wachowskis’ Cloud Atlas), German actor actor Max Riemelt, Spanish actor Miguel Silvestre, and Mexican actor and actress Alfonso Herrera and Eréndira Ibarra.

And here, according to Straczynski, is what the show will be about:

“The series follows eight characters around the world who, in the aftermath of a tragic death, find themselves linked to each other mentally and emotionally. They can not only see and talk to each other as though they were in the same place, they have access to each other’s deepest secrets. Not only must they figure out what happened and why and what it means for the future of humanity, they must do so while being hunted by an organization out to capture, kill or vivisect them.”

According to Deadline those eight characters (reminder: “a closeted Mexican telenovela hunk, an Icelandic party girl, a German safe-cracker, a Korean businesswoman, an African bus driver and a transgender American blogger” are six of them) will be played by Smith, Middleton, Ameen, Bae, Silvestri, Desae, Riemelt, and Clayton. Something tells me we’ll be looking at Andrews, Agyeman, and Hannah in guest roles. There are two other major characters we’ve heard about so far: “an apparently magic African-American who appears to all of the ‘visionaries,’ and his evil counterpart, Mr. Whispers.”

What say you? Excited, or do you need more info?

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Pantone

Font Awesome to PNG:

…a small web app returning Font Awesome icons as png.