Ridiculous Pasta:
One box of Pasta Roni(r), Angel Hair Pasta With Parmesan Cheese Flavor
One pear chopped into little chunks
Some frozen peas (to taste and whatnot)
Nutmeg
Cinnamon
Okay. Prepare Pasta Roni as directed, of course, but somewhere in there, add the chunks of pear and the peas.
Once it's done, sprinkle nutmeg and cinnamon on top.
Pasta for texture, sauce for savory-ness, peas for protein, and pear for awesomeness. Plus spices because cooked pear without cinnamon? Come on man, you must be joking.
Seriously. It's ridiculous and delicious and I'm doing it again. I wonder if Pasta Roni(r) is holding a recipe contest.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Monday, September 19, 2011
Japanese
Junior year is kicking my butt!
I know, I know, excuses. But I'm honestly terrible at Japanese, and I'm taking three classes in it, all on the same days, each of which assumes that it's the only Japanese class I'm taking so it had better cram as much larnin' as possible into my head and quiz it all as often as possible, so I'm constantly overloaded with readings and writings and testings and fillings-out-of-worksheets. And that's without even counting the other (phonetics) class I'm taking. Sigh! And I'm bad at time management or I wouldn't be writing this. Clearly. At 4:40 am.
Oh,
I figured out what that science-fiction-y stone is...prehnite, also known as green (or grossular, sometimes) garnet, with rutile inclusions. Pretty nifty.
I know, I know, excuses. But I'm honestly terrible at Japanese, and I'm taking three classes in it, all on the same days, each of which assumes that it's the only Japanese class I'm taking so it had better cram as much larnin' as possible into my head and quiz it all as often as possible, so I'm constantly overloaded with readings and writings and testings and fillings-out-of-worksheets. And that's without even counting the other (phonetics) class I'm taking. Sigh! And I'm bad at time management or I wouldn't be writing this. Clearly. At 4:40 am.
Oh,
I figured out what that science-fiction-y stone is...prehnite, also known as green (or grossular, sometimes) garnet, with rutile inclusions. Pretty nifty.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Semantics
Now that you all know I'm a linguist, I'm going to talk about semantics. I just thought of it because it occurred to me that in at least one of my posts, I'm giving too much information.
Semantics is the meaning of a sentence, basically...and there are at least two different ones for each sentence.
There's the literal meaning: "I have to be at work at 7 tomorrow."
And then there's the implicated meaning: "Do you want to stop for a drink?" "I have to be at work at 7 tomorrow."
As you can see, the context given to the second one gives it a lot of other meanings, such as:
"No." (Or at least "Even if I want to, I can't.")
"I have a good reason for saying no."
"The reason I'm saying no is unrelated to you."
And the very fact of having said that implicates:
"I WANT YOU TO KNOW that the reason I'm saying no is unrelated to you."
Which in turn adds the implicature of:
"I am not refusing because I hate you."
"I might be open to being invited by you to do the same thing at another time."
Context matters, basically. LONG STORY SHOT.
Even without such contexts, though, there are some things that speakers just KNOW about words. I'm talking only about native English speakers in these specific examples, by the way.
For instance: "I ate some of the cookies."
That technically just means "The number of cookies I ate was greater than zero.
While that doesn't technically mean I did not eat some of the cookies and then the rest of the cookies...it doesn't technically mean I didn't eat ALL of the cookies, if all of the cookies were gone, you'd still be looking for who ate the rest of the cookies after I was done. This implicature made by some (that it means "not all") is so strong that even in my class full of linguists who had been learning about semantic logic for half a semester already, there were plenty of people who argued with the teacher and told him that "some" meant "not all" as part of its DEFINITION. It doesn't, actually, but if you think it does, you're not alone. It's just that strong of an implication.
In fact, you'd assume that not only had I not eaten all of them, I hadn't even eaten MOST of them. This is called "Scalar Implicature" and is hard to explain. Let me just say that you assume I'm telling you EXACTLY as much as you need to know. NO MORE, NO LESS.
I try not to buy gemstones from people who don't label things that have been dyed as "dyed" (or "treated" or "color-enhanced" or whatever) but everybody likes to get an edge, and there are plenty of people who will label things as "natural" "untreated" "100% natural" and so on, but then simply neglect to put those tags on the dyed things...so while the dyed things are not labeled as dyed, they are tacitly labeled as "not natural color," and they probably consider that honest. Personally I think it's not really honest, considering that someone would only have that context if they looked at the person's other shop items that WERE their natural color. But it's so often done that it gets to the point of having to assume that if it doesn't mention it being "100% natural," there's a good chance that it's dyed. Implicature, man, so crazy.
(Mostly I just stick with those sellers that put "dyed" in the description and feel like I know what I'm buying, even if it IS dyed. I just don't want to pass on anything dishonest into my work and to my buyers. It doesn't really MATTER, usually...dyed things are pretty and in some cases prettier than natural because they went through the effort of looking like that, and I have bought and used dyed stones...but it makes me feel better.)
Reading the post on something I just sold today has just made me realize that I was giving too much information. I put, "These pictures have NOT been edited for color."
Which, I mean, was true. And it seemed like a good thing to say, "Look! The colors really are this bright!" Why would I NOT want my customers to know that? BUT WAIT.
So what does that imply about ALL of my other photos?
NOOOOOOOOOOO. *falls into a pit of doom!*
Though only a very few of my pictures HAVE been edited for color. And when they were, like in the Thunderhead Earrings, I put a note in the description saying basically, "These pictures have been edited to make them more color-accurate because my camera sucks, so yes, they're edited, but it's better this way, trust me." And yet, my putting that one line of description in a post could have put all of my other pictures into question through the magic of semantics.
Luckily, I'm pretty sure nobody looked at that and thought, "Well, if they WEREN'T edited for color, she'd have put that every time!" Nobody expects me to be that organized, I hope.
Semantics is the meaning of a sentence, basically...and there are at least two different ones for each sentence.
There's the literal meaning: "I have to be at work at 7 tomorrow."
And then there's the implicated meaning: "Do you want to stop for a drink?" "I have to be at work at 7 tomorrow."
As you can see, the context given to the second one gives it a lot of other meanings, such as:
"No." (Or at least "Even if I want to, I can't.")
"I have a good reason for saying no."
"The reason I'm saying no is unrelated to you."
And the very fact of having said that implicates:
"I WANT YOU TO KNOW that the reason I'm saying no is unrelated to you."
Which in turn adds the implicature of:
"I am not refusing because I hate you."
"I might be open to being invited by you to do the same thing at another time."
Context matters, basically. LONG STORY SHOT.
Even without such contexts, though, there are some things that speakers just KNOW about words. I'm talking only about native English speakers in these specific examples, by the way.
For instance: "I ate some of the cookies."
That technically just means "The number of cookies I ate was greater than zero.
While that doesn't technically mean I did not eat some of the cookies and then the rest of the cookies...it doesn't technically mean I didn't eat ALL of the cookies, if all of the cookies were gone, you'd still be looking for who ate the rest of the cookies after I was done. This implicature made by some (that it means "not all") is so strong that even in my class full of linguists who had been learning about semantic logic for half a semester already, there were plenty of people who argued with the teacher and told him that "some" meant "not all" as part of its DEFINITION. It doesn't, actually, but if you think it does, you're not alone. It's just that strong of an implication.
In fact, you'd assume that not only had I not eaten all of them, I hadn't even eaten MOST of them. This is called "Scalar Implicature" and is hard to explain. Let me just say that you assume I'm telling you EXACTLY as much as you need to know. NO MORE, NO LESS.
I try not to buy gemstones from people who don't label things that have been dyed as "dyed" (or "treated" or "color-enhanced" or whatever) but everybody likes to get an edge, and there are plenty of people who will label things as "natural" "untreated" "100% natural" and so on, but then simply neglect to put those tags on the dyed things...so while the dyed things are not labeled as dyed, they are tacitly labeled as "not natural color," and they probably consider that honest. Personally I think it's not really honest, considering that someone would only have that context if they looked at the person's other shop items that WERE their natural color. But it's so often done that it gets to the point of having to assume that if it doesn't mention it being "100% natural," there's a good chance that it's dyed. Implicature, man, so crazy.
(Mostly I just stick with those sellers that put "dyed" in the description and feel like I know what I'm buying, even if it IS dyed. I just don't want to pass on anything dishonest into my work and to my buyers. It doesn't really MATTER, usually...dyed things are pretty and in some cases prettier than natural because they went through the effort of looking like that, and I have bought and used dyed stones...but it makes me feel better.)
Reading the post on something I just sold today has just made me realize that I was giving too much information. I put, "These pictures have NOT been edited for color."
Which, I mean, was true. And it seemed like a good thing to say, "Look! The colors really are this bright!" Why would I NOT want my customers to know that? BUT WAIT.
So what does that imply about ALL of my other photos?
NOOOOOOOOOOO. *falls into a pit of doom!*
Though only a very few of my pictures HAVE been edited for color. And when they were, like in the Thunderhead Earrings, I put a note in the description saying basically, "These pictures have been edited to make them more color-accurate because my camera sucks, so yes, they're edited, but it's better this way, trust me." And yet, my putting that one line of description in a post could have put all of my other pictures into question through the magic of semantics.
Luckily, I'm pretty sure nobody looked at that and thought, "Well, if they WEREN'T edited for color, she'd have put that every time!" Nobody expects me to be that organized, I hope.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Four New Pieces, Two of Which Are Shop-Bound!
I promised pictures, and here they are! More, even, than you expected! Weeks 21-25 of my Year of Jewelry Project, as well. Feel free to take a look there, but here will have pretty much the same stuff, because I can't resist an opportunity to gush about my work when handed such a convenient way to do it.
Off we go:
First of all, two of these are at least partially video-game-inspired, so yes, now that we're past learning how much of a geek I am, we can get on to how AWESOME these things are.
The first one is just a big globe of tiger-eye which I bought because it reminds me of the planes of Oblivion from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion...a dark and shifting and mysterious black lava-rock landscape perforated with veins of gleaming, glowing lava. This dark blue tiger-eye, with its veins of red and yellow and its mysterious chatoyance, reminds me of the menacing, thrilling feeling of navigating through a magical and dangerous and hostile environment alone...
It's BIG, 21mm, and it's just a huge globe with no way to configure it any particular way...I, wisely, I think, realized that the best way to use it in a piece would just be to let it show off, turn as it would, and just be the spectacular stone that it is. Any bigger of a setting and the stone would be too big to wear...I just put enough copper on it to set it off and to keep it held secure. I've already worn it - it goes well with dark clothes, lends subtle interest, especially with a low-cut neckline. Personally, I love it. Subtle and dark and mysterious is a streak I definitely should bring out in myself more often.
These beauties are rough, unpolished nuggets of green tourmaline. Tourmaline naturally grows in a spiky shape, so "nugget" doesn't really work to describe it, but that's pretty much what they are. They're dark, dark green and when you look at them deeply, they shine with a glitteriness that is almost impossible-looking. As long as I can remember, I've loved things like that - again, the mysteriousness. You have to look deep into them to see their true nature, and that nature changes as soon as they move. I don't know why, but something fascinates me about things like that...and these are perfect in that way. Hand-formed chain means that depending on the angle you see them from, the chains themselves look completely different - they're either made up of s-links or a graduated series of rings. I think that that change, that ability to shift appearances depending on a gust of wind, is perfect for these stones, which change depending on the angle you see them from, how close you are, the light conditions, their vector and velocity...these are mutable as the wind, and I love it! And I hope someone gets that and loves them as much as I do, because I can't afford to keep anything silver these days. I may have to make some similar thing to keep, though, because Boyfriend of Mine loves these! It's nice to have a guy who notices your earrings, but man, does it ever make it hard to sell them.
Here's a view that shows off the two different views of the chain:
And here's a view that shows off the glittery shine of the stones:
This necklace was unexpected...I knew I wanted to do something with that awesome stone, and I was going to go ultra-simple with it, but somehow accents materialized, and then a bird swooped down to make a toggle when I tried to clasp it with a simple hook. So the egg is bigger than the bird - poetic license, okay? It's best this way - If I wasn't going ultra-simple and just putting the stone on a wire and hooking it up, then I need to have the balance that that toggle brings when it pulls everything together (literally). Otherwise it would be very unbalanced with the stone on the one hand, the open ring on the other, and nothing to finish the look. It wasn't intended at all to be a bird-themed necklace, and yet, that stone makes a good robin's egg, and the whole is like a cave painting of a serene spring scene; highly stylized, primitive-looking, rough, but pure in intent.
And....finally. This. Science Fiction, right here.
I don't actually know what this stone is, because the little card on the table I bought it from said "fossil jasper" - but no fossil jasper I've ever seen looks anything like it. I intended to go ultra-simple with this one too, but look what my hands did when I wasn't paying attention! It ended up being WAY more awesome. It gives me a really science-fiction-y vibe, and two of my friends told me that it looked like "Welkynd Stones" (a sort of magical relic) from the same game as I mentioned earlier, which we all play - and so I'm thinking of it as a Welkynd Stone, and it's my magic charm.
This is another thing I'm keeping for myself, not because I bought the stone for that purpose, but because now that it's made, I cannot sell it. At least, not yet. It's perfectly my style. It's happened before that for a week or four days I was completely in love with a piece and then all of a sudden I was fine to give it up, so maybe that will happen again, but for now, this is staying in my personal stash and that's that. The way the frame goes down only so far and no farther and no less far, it's perfect! The way it looks like it's floating in the frame is perfect! The contrast between the widths of all those gauges of wires, the wrap, the spirals, the binding wires - all perfect and exactly what I want and I love this piece. So much. If it goes up on the market, you know what a fickle heart my heart is...right now, it's MINE.
It's worth noting, though, that I have another stone just like this one, and I'd be fine with making another pendant like it. You know, if anyone wants one. Hehe.
So, that's my I-Made-Things post for this week! If you think things, let me know what they are!
Off we go:
First of all, two of these are at least partially video-game-inspired, so yes, now that we're past learning how much of a geek I am, we can get on to how AWESOME these things are.
It's BIG, 21mm, and it's just a huge globe with no way to configure it any particular way...I, wisely, I think, realized that the best way to use it in a piece would just be to let it show off, turn as it would, and just be the spectacular stone that it is. Any bigger of a setting and the stone would be too big to wear...I just put enough copper on it to set it off and to keep it held secure. I've already worn it - it goes well with dark clothes, lends subtle interest, especially with a low-cut neckline. Personally, I love it. Subtle and dark and mysterious is a streak I definitely should bring out in myself more often.
These beauties are rough, unpolished nuggets of green tourmaline. Tourmaline naturally grows in a spiky shape, so "nugget" doesn't really work to describe it, but that's pretty much what they are. They're dark, dark green and when you look at them deeply, they shine with a glitteriness that is almost impossible-looking. As long as I can remember, I've loved things like that - again, the mysteriousness. You have to look deep into them to see their true nature, and that nature changes as soon as they move. I don't know why, but something fascinates me about things like that...and these are perfect in that way. Hand-formed chain means that depending on the angle you see them from, the chains themselves look completely different - they're either made up of s-links or a graduated series of rings. I think that that change, that ability to shift appearances depending on a gust of wind, is perfect for these stones, which change depending on the angle you see them from, how close you are, the light conditions, their vector and velocity...these are mutable as the wind, and I love it! And I hope someone gets that and loves them as much as I do, because I can't afford to keep anything silver these days. I may have to make some similar thing to keep, though, because Boyfriend of Mine loves these! It's nice to have a guy who notices your earrings, but man, does it ever make it hard to sell them.
Here's a view that shows off the two different views of the chain:
And here's a view that shows off the glittery shine of the stones:
And....finally. This. Science Fiction, right here.
This is another thing I'm keeping for myself, not because I bought the stone for that purpose, but because now that it's made, I cannot sell it. At least, not yet. It's perfectly my style. It's happened before that for a week or four days I was completely in love with a piece and then all of a sudden I was fine to give it up, so maybe that will happen again, but for now, this is staying in my personal stash and that's that. The way the frame goes down only so far and no farther and no less far, it's perfect! The way it looks like it's floating in the frame is perfect! The contrast between the widths of all those gauges of wires, the wrap, the spirals, the binding wires - all perfect and exactly what I want and I love this piece. So much. If it goes up on the market, you know what a fickle heart my heart is...right now, it's MINE.
It's worth noting, though, that I have another stone just like this one, and I'd be fine with making another pendant like it. You know, if anyone wants one. Hehe.
So, that's my I-Made-Things post for this week! If you think things, let me know what they are!
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Artistic Integrity
This is a commonly touched-upon topic, but though I think about it often, I've never really talked to anyone about it...
Well, today I made a sacrifice for my artistic integrity, and I'm proud of myself for it. Probably I shouldn't be...it was only decent of me...but I did give up something, so I reserve the right to my pride as a consolation prize.
I read something on the Etsy forums (fora...) recently, an artist's confession that she had accidentally stolen some other people's designs. She said that she got a custom order request, and the woman requesting claimed that she had designed the images herself, and wanted them put on the seller's wares. The customer was a dear friend of the artist, apparently, and the artist thought that her friend's images were so cute that she asked, in exchange for a discount on the custom order, for permission from the customer to reproduce the images in her shop. The customer gave her permission, got her discount, and got her items.
The seller reproduced the images on her wares, and apparently received many very angry messages that she was a plagiarist, a copyright-violator, a business-thief, etc.. She was reported to Etsy admin several times, I don't know if anyone pressed copyright violation charges or anything, but she was humiliated, abused, threatened and reprimanded, all because the customer, her FRIEND, had lied and said that she had created the images herself...and then let her friend take the fall for an unknowing but illegal action in exchange for a discount. She sold her friend out for a discount from her...talk about reprehensible. The least she could have done was said that she planned to sell the images herself and saved her face AND her friend, and not taken the discount.
Since the friend knew that she had not created the images and said that she had, clearly this is a case of knowingly defrauding other artists.
Well, today, I received a custom order request for a ring "similar to" one that I had in my shop...the only real similarity was that they both involved a heart shape. She attached a picture of the ring she wanted made. It was a real ring, and had been made by someone else.
The customer probably didn't know that the techniques involved in making my ring and the ring she wanted were completely different, and she may not even have known that my knowingly reproducing a work that someone else designed - even if it was as iconic a shape as a heart put on something as normal as a ring - is illegal and considered plagiarism. But I do.
As an artist who is just-starting-out in the slowest and most preoccupied way, EVERY sale is a big deal to me. Every custom order, especially, because those, at least in theory, make people the most happy that you exist to make them jewelry, and therefore the most likely to brag to other people about it: oh yes, I had it custom made for me by this artist on Etsy, oh yes, she's fantastic, she makes the most adorable things, I just had to get one that was just for me, more personal, you know - the more they talk you up, the better they are likely to feel about having bought from you, and so it makes everybody happy, including the people they're talking to, who may go on to order from this so-esteemed artist. Custom orders are a big deal.
But, you know. I'm not like that. And because it's an object, not just an image, I know she didn't make it or have claim to it...if she could make it, she wouldn't be asking me to do it. And I do realize that, unlike the woman who lied to her friend and claimed that she made the images herself, this customer probably didn't realize that it would be a problem for me if I were caught making what she wanted. She was probably just hoping I would make it cheaper than whoever made it first, and she didn't try to claim anything about the legality of it to me, or falsify anything. So I don't blame her. But it still rubbed a bit of salt in my wounds to know that not only did I not get the order, but I was the one who had to decline it, like saying "No, thanks, I won't take your money and buy new beads with it." I don't have the money, I didn't make the piece for her, I didn't satisfy her want, and it's MY FAULT. Though it isn't really, it just stings a bit to have had to write back to her myself that I must decline.
And what REALLY stings is, I directed her to look at other Etsy shops who make similar things, hoping she'd just break down and buy what she wanted from the original seller or get a similar one from someone who actually created a design in the same vein that she wanted...and hopefully my pointing out that that would be plagiarism and illegal will be enough to convince her not to put other people in the same position as she put me. It's very possible that she didn't intend at all to steal business from someone and just hadn't thought about it. But I have no guarantee, none whatsoever, that she won't just send the same message to someone else, and that that person will be as scrupulous. And I'll have my dignity, and my artistic integrity, and no money to buy more beads. And the unscrupulous person will have her money instead. Why is that allowed to win?
Luckily, I just bought more beads, so I'm happy for a while. Lucky stones! And in the end, I feel better for having chosen integrity over money, when the choice was offered. Someone may still get plagiarized, and I will be able to sympathize, and consider myself to have more integrity than whoever did it, and if I am ever plagiarized I will be angry, and I will not be a hypocrite for it. Thank you, mom, for raising me that way.
But seriously! New focal beads! LUCKY LUCKY LUCKY! And one of them is just for MEEEEE.
Well, today I made a sacrifice for my artistic integrity, and I'm proud of myself for it. Probably I shouldn't be...it was only decent of me...but I did give up something, so I reserve the right to my pride as a consolation prize.
I read something on the Etsy forums (fora...) recently, an artist's confession that she had accidentally stolen some other people's designs. She said that she got a custom order request, and the woman requesting claimed that she had designed the images herself, and wanted them put on the seller's wares. The customer was a dear friend of the artist, apparently, and the artist thought that her friend's images were so cute that she asked, in exchange for a discount on the custom order, for permission from the customer to reproduce the images in her shop. The customer gave her permission, got her discount, and got her items.
The seller reproduced the images on her wares, and apparently received many very angry messages that she was a plagiarist, a copyright-violator, a business-thief, etc.. She was reported to Etsy admin several times, I don't know if anyone pressed copyright violation charges or anything, but she was humiliated, abused, threatened and reprimanded, all because the customer, her FRIEND, had lied and said that she had created the images herself...and then let her friend take the fall for an unknowing but illegal action in exchange for a discount. She sold her friend out for a discount from her...talk about reprehensible. The least she could have done was said that she planned to sell the images herself and saved her face AND her friend, and not taken the discount.
Since the friend knew that she had not created the images and said that she had, clearly this is a case of knowingly defrauding other artists.
Well, today, I received a custom order request for a ring "similar to" one that I had in my shop...the only real similarity was that they both involved a heart shape. She attached a picture of the ring she wanted made. It was a real ring, and had been made by someone else.
The customer probably didn't know that the techniques involved in making my ring and the ring she wanted were completely different, and she may not even have known that my knowingly reproducing a work that someone else designed - even if it was as iconic a shape as a heart put on something as normal as a ring - is illegal and considered plagiarism. But I do.
As an artist who is just-starting-out in the slowest and most preoccupied way, EVERY sale is a big deal to me. Every custom order, especially, because those, at least in theory, make people the most happy that you exist to make them jewelry, and therefore the most likely to brag to other people about it: oh yes, I had it custom made for me by this artist on Etsy, oh yes, she's fantastic, she makes the most adorable things, I just had to get one that was just for me, more personal, you know - the more they talk you up, the better they are likely to feel about having bought from you, and so it makes everybody happy, including the people they're talking to, who may go on to order from this so-esteemed artist. Custom orders are a big deal.
But, you know. I'm not like that. And because it's an object, not just an image, I know she didn't make it or have claim to it...if she could make it, she wouldn't be asking me to do it. And I do realize that, unlike the woman who lied to her friend and claimed that she made the images herself, this customer probably didn't realize that it would be a problem for me if I were caught making what she wanted. She was probably just hoping I would make it cheaper than whoever made it first, and she didn't try to claim anything about the legality of it to me, or falsify anything. So I don't blame her. But it still rubbed a bit of salt in my wounds to know that not only did I not get the order, but I was the one who had to decline it, like saying "No, thanks, I won't take your money and buy new beads with it." I don't have the money, I didn't make the piece for her, I didn't satisfy her want, and it's MY FAULT. Though it isn't really, it just stings a bit to have had to write back to her myself that I must decline.
And what REALLY stings is, I directed her to look at other Etsy shops who make similar things, hoping she'd just break down and buy what she wanted from the original seller or get a similar one from someone who actually created a design in the same vein that she wanted...and hopefully my pointing out that that would be plagiarism and illegal will be enough to convince her not to put other people in the same position as she put me. It's very possible that she didn't intend at all to steal business from someone and just hadn't thought about it. But I have no guarantee, none whatsoever, that she won't just send the same message to someone else, and that that person will be as scrupulous. And I'll have my dignity, and my artistic integrity, and no money to buy more beads. And the unscrupulous person will have her money instead. Why is that allowed to win?
Luckily, I just bought more beads, so I'm happy for a while. Lucky stones! And in the end, I feel better for having chosen integrity over money, when the choice was offered. Someone may still get plagiarized, and I will be able to sympathize, and consider myself to have more integrity than whoever did it, and if I am ever plagiarized I will be angry, and I will not be a hypocrite for it. Thank you, mom, for raising me that way.
But seriously! New focal beads! LUCKY LUCKY LUCKY! And one of them is just for MEEEEE.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
A Research Blog
I've lately realized that, while I follow a lot of other jewelry-makers' blogs for techniques, inspiration and tips...that stuff is only interesting to me because I am also a jewelry-maker. And even then, the more interesting blogs have other stuff thrown in, too. Someone's scruffy husband being a dear and fixing the car on the dramatic road trip to the bead show. Someone's apple-cheeked kid spilling ice cream on himself. I'm a sucker for that stuff, and it makes them seem more like real people as opposed to just really-awesome-jewelry machines. I love jewelry, but I will never be a machine. Someone I can relate to is much more interesting.
And I, like every other jewelry-maker and -seller, also have to realize that my target audience is not, in fact, other jewelry-makers; it’s jewelry-buyers, or people who will tell other people about my jewelry. And I can only assume that a string of neat-looking stuff will not hold their attention as much as a real person’s life, because the same is true of me even though jewelry is one of my favorite things. Bottom line, it wouldn’t kill me to show some personality on this thing. Hence my “cooking for absolute idiots” posts showcasing what an absolute idiot I am about cooking. If anyone’s listening, stir-fry is NOT THAT HARD, I SWEAR.
Well, I don’t have a scruffy husband or an apple-cheeked kid...and dear, camera-shy Boyfriend of Mine would probably object to me putting his picture online...but I do have a life besides jewelry. In fact, it’s been taking up all of my time lately. When I said “It would take me 3 pieces a week to catch up” I didn’t mean that I would actually manage that. I knew it wouldn’t happen when I said it, at least not soon, and just recently I started my analyses in earnest, so it definitely won’t. But it is interesting nonetheless. (THOUGH I DID MAKE TWO PIECES TODAY, YES TWO. PICTURES UP SOON.)
So, prepare for a long, laughing, overdramatized account of my adventures in...(dun dun dun) LABELING SOUND FILES!
For anyone who doesn’t know (which is most of the internet) I’m a linguist by major, and my research for this summer has been studying intonation patterns in a production study. Basically I get people to talk into a microphone and then figure out how getting them to say certain things rather than others affects their pitch. It’s the kind of stuff that’s fascinating if you’re a linguist, and if you’re not, you don’t have any opinion about it, so how ‘bout that weather?
But I’m learning a lot of stuff that bears thinking about even if you’re not into intonation, phonetics or any sort of linguistics at all. General research stuff, like: How do you decide when something is an error and when it’s a data point? But back to that in a moment.
My analysis work so far has mostly been prepping things for computers to pull data out of them. I go through sound files and label certain parts, like high points in the pitch and where the vowel starts. Sounds easy, right? Until you realize that I went through a three-day stretch where all I saw was this:
Which by the way, zooms out to this:
Which is fine except it zooms out to this:
And a couple more times, to this:
Which is not quite as large as the whole thing:
Those are 1) the level I work at, 2) zoomed out twice from there, 3) zoomed out twice again 4) zoomed out 4 times from THAT point, and then 5) zoomed out a whole three more times because that’s all of it. Yeah. Eleven zoom-outs total. Notice the way the pitch track disappeared after the first one? That’s because if I have it calculate all of that even if I’m zoomed in to like 2 seconds, it slows down my computer. I have to zoom into ONE SECOND to actually see what I'm analyzing...and the file is ten minutes long. Long story short, I spent 22 hours straight staring at a screen that looks very much like 1) up there, got 8 hours of sleep and then went back to it for another 16. And I only got to halfway through subject 5 before I burned out. There are 6 subjects...I’m taking a break and doing some data-pulling, thanks.
Doing stuff like that really starts to mess with your head after a while. Somewhere in the middle of figuring out where the d ends and the m begins in this squiggly line:
(Hint: The cursor’s on it. Couldn’t tell? That’s okay, it means you’re sane!)
I realized that in trying to label the end of the consonant, I could not remember what consonant “consonant” started with. At one point I freaked out wondering, “Where’s the consonant at the end of ‘be’?? I can’t find it anywhere!” Only to remember that it is, and always will be, in the hammer space.
After several hours of each, I started to get thoroughly sick of nearly everyone’s voice (Okay, just the nasally ones...subject 2 was actually rather adorable). And of course, each and every subject came up with a special individual problem that I had to figure out how to deal with...one subject inexplicably changed all his Ds to Ns – don’t ask me, he doesn’t do it in person – another had a mysterious extra pitch peak that made her samples all look like little hearts, which was cute and all, but I have to label one of those peaks, which one? WHICH ONE? - another subject had weird lilts at the beginnings of the parts that I was labeling that made it impossible sometimes to make an accurate label...and even when it was possible, it was nerve-wracking because every time, I could be wrong. Here I was labeling important parts of the intonation contour, and suddenly this bizarre thing happens and I have no idea what to do...and then each subject proceeded to make his own individual weird thing happen like EVERY OTHER TIME. And since my mentor was on a two-week vacation and is absolutely terrible at answering emails even at the best of times, let alone while hiking with his kids...Yeah. Bad news. Some freaking out happened. When I got too crazy to label anymore, I ended up labeling a lot of them “m” for “help Me please” even when in my normal state they seemed totally fine. And that was for the ones that are totally fine.
Which brings me, by the way, to my previously-mentioned dilemma. How do you tell when something is an error, some outlier to be not counted with the rest...or a data point, a piece of useful information? How do you know when it’s important? For instance:
This is what the contour I was working with looks like:
So what do I do when all of a sudden it looks like this instead?
And there were a lot that were less obviously software problems. Do I assume “That can’t be right, it doesn’t look like the rest of them” or do I have to say, "Well...that’s the way he made it, I have to take that into account.”? Most of the time, it’s the first one...the software I’m using is notoriously unreliable when it comes to tracking pitch and is known to change its mind on what’s what pitch depending on things like how far you’re zoomed in, how far left you are of the pitch in question, and what settings you’ve chosen to display the pitch at. It’s usually reasonable, if something looks bizarre, to assume “That’s an error.” Especially the cases where you can see a normal contour under that, looking all groovy, and there’s just a few artifacts screwing it up. Or, if not by virtue of the software, it’s entirely plausibly throw-out-able just because the person got tired and said it wrong. A lot of them switched into listing mode, for instance, when we wanted a pitch contour that sounded like a standalone statement.
But then there are the brain-stirring errors that completely change everything and you have no choice but to just go with it against your will even though you know the sentence doesn’t sound like it looks like that and why is that bump there, but it’s too big to just be an artifact, what’s going on? MOM?!
My “m” labels go through tides of desperation with my sleep cycle...near the end of my “functional” periods there are lots of notes like, “That has to be an error, why would it look like that?”, “Should I be worried about this?” and “This one's high in a really awkward place, much like a stoner at a funeral.” Part of my way to keep myself sane was to think up a new emoticon denoting devastation whenever someone said it in a way that we’d have to throw out, like using the wrong contour, or coughing in the middle. If my mentor ever actually reads those (unlikely), I think he’ll get a new perspective on the art of iconography. They included upside-down, upside-right, backwards and to either side.
Halfway through Subject 4, I got the idea that I’d blog about it afterward...and that kept me going through another half or two of data set, stopping every once in a while to take screenshots. Every annoyance or delay was like “BOO-YAH. ANOTHER INTERESTING SENTENCE. I CAN TOTALLY HYPERBOLIZE THAT.”...including that one.
I still burned out.
Not to complain, though...it was just a strange time not many of anyone who’s going to read this will ever experience...and it’s probably the easiest job I could have that would still be intellectually stimulating, and the schedule is lax enough for me to still be awake at 5:00 am (now)...and if I had left myself more time to do it before it was necessary to get crackin’, then I wouldn’t have had such crazy days, but actually, it was rather fun. I’ll try not to do it again, but if I could go back and have the chance to do it once, I’d still do it the first time. I feel like that’s an experience I ought to have had, doing almost-grad work the summer after my sophomore year. And I’m learning a ton! Pretty soon everyone (who works in intonation theory) will start hearing about Tonal Center of Gravity – and if anyone asks, that’s my mentor’s idea, oh yeah. I know that guy. I could get you an autograph...if you’re nice.
Oh and also, Boyfriend and I had a second anniversary. That was fun. More rain than expected. Less being outside than expected. Therefore, more cozy than expected, so it's all good.
And I, like every other jewelry-maker and -seller, also have to realize that my target audience is not, in fact, other jewelry-makers; it’s jewelry-buyers, or people who will tell other people about my jewelry. And I can only assume that a string of neat-looking stuff will not hold their attention as much as a real person’s life, because the same is true of me even though jewelry is one of my favorite things. Bottom line, it wouldn’t kill me to show some personality on this thing. Hence my “cooking for absolute idiots” posts showcasing what an absolute idiot I am about cooking. If anyone’s listening, stir-fry is NOT THAT HARD, I SWEAR.
Well, I don’t have a scruffy husband or an apple-cheeked kid...and dear, camera-shy Boyfriend of Mine would probably object to me putting his picture online...but I do have a life besides jewelry. In fact, it’s been taking up all of my time lately. When I said “It would take me 3 pieces a week to catch up” I didn’t mean that I would actually manage that. I knew it wouldn’t happen when I said it, at least not soon, and just recently I started my analyses in earnest, so it definitely won’t. But it is interesting nonetheless. (THOUGH I DID MAKE TWO PIECES TODAY, YES TWO. PICTURES UP SOON.)
So, prepare for a long, laughing, overdramatized account of my adventures in...(dun dun dun) LABELING SOUND FILES!
For anyone who doesn’t know (which is most of the internet) I’m a linguist by major, and my research for this summer has been studying intonation patterns in a production study. Basically I get people to talk into a microphone and then figure out how getting them to say certain things rather than others affects their pitch. It’s the kind of stuff that’s fascinating if you’re a linguist, and if you’re not, you don’t have any opinion about it, so how ‘bout that weather?
But I’m learning a lot of stuff that bears thinking about even if you’re not into intonation, phonetics or any sort of linguistics at all. General research stuff, like: How do you decide when something is an error and when it’s a data point? But back to that in a moment.
My analysis work so far has mostly been prepping things for computers to pull data out of them. I go through sound files and label certain parts, like high points in the pitch and where the vowel starts. Sounds easy, right? Until you realize that I went through a three-day stretch where all I saw was this:
Which by the way, zooms out to this:
Which is fine except it zooms out to this:
And a couple more times, to this:
Which is not quite as large as the whole thing:
Those are 1) the level I work at, 2) zoomed out twice from there, 3) zoomed out twice again 4) zoomed out 4 times from THAT point, and then 5) zoomed out a whole three more times because that’s all of it. Yeah. Eleven zoom-outs total. Notice the way the pitch track disappeared after the first one? That’s because if I have it calculate all of that even if I’m zoomed in to like 2 seconds, it slows down my computer. I have to zoom into ONE SECOND to actually see what I'm analyzing...and the file is ten minutes long. Long story short, I spent 22 hours straight staring at a screen that looks very much like 1) up there, got 8 hours of sleep and then went back to it for another 16. And I only got to halfway through subject 5 before I burned out. There are 6 subjects...I’m taking a break and doing some data-pulling, thanks.
Doing stuff like that really starts to mess with your head after a while. Somewhere in the middle of figuring out where the d ends and the m begins in this squiggly line:
(Hint: The cursor’s on it. Couldn’t tell? That’s okay, it means you’re sane!)
I realized that in trying to label the end of the consonant, I could not remember what consonant “consonant” started with. At one point I freaked out wondering, “Where’s the consonant at the end of ‘be’?? I can’t find it anywhere!” Only to remember that it is, and always will be, in the hammer space.
After several hours of each, I started to get thoroughly sick of nearly everyone’s voice (Okay, just the nasally ones...subject 2 was actually rather adorable). And of course, each and every subject came up with a special individual problem that I had to figure out how to deal with...one subject inexplicably changed all his Ds to Ns – don’t ask me, he doesn’t do it in person – another had a mysterious extra pitch peak that made her samples all look like little hearts, which was cute and all, but I have to label one of those peaks, which one? WHICH ONE? - another subject had weird lilts at the beginnings of the parts that I was labeling that made it impossible sometimes to make an accurate label...and even when it was possible, it was nerve-wracking because every time, I could be wrong. Here I was labeling important parts of the intonation contour, and suddenly this bizarre thing happens and I have no idea what to do...and then each subject proceeded to make his own individual weird thing happen like EVERY OTHER TIME. And since my mentor was on a two-week vacation and is absolutely terrible at answering emails even at the best of times, let alone while hiking with his kids...Yeah. Bad news. Some freaking out happened. When I got too crazy to label anymore, I ended up labeling a lot of them “m” for “help Me please” even when in my normal state they seemed totally fine. And that was for the ones that are totally fine.
Which brings me, by the way, to my previously-mentioned dilemma. How do you tell when something is an error, some outlier to be not counted with the rest...or a data point, a piece of useful information? How do you know when it’s important? For instance:
This is what the contour I was working with looks like:
So what do I do when all of a sudden it looks like this instead?
And there were a lot that were less obviously software problems. Do I assume “That can’t be right, it doesn’t look like the rest of them” or do I have to say, "Well...that’s the way he made it, I have to take that into account.”? Most of the time, it’s the first one...the software I’m using is notoriously unreliable when it comes to tracking pitch and is known to change its mind on what’s what pitch depending on things like how far you’re zoomed in, how far left you are of the pitch in question, and what settings you’ve chosen to display the pitch at. It’s usually reasonable, if something looks bizarre, to assume “That’s an error.” Especially the cases where you can see a normal contour under that, looking all groovy, and there’s just a few artifacts screwing it up. Or, if not by virtue of the software, it’s entirely plausibly throw-out-able just because the person got tired and said it wrong. A lot of them switched into listing mode, for instance, when we wanted a pitch contour that sounded like a standalone statement.
But then there are the brain-stirring errors that completely change everything and you have no choice but to just go with it against your will even though you know the sentence doesn’t sound like it looks like that and why is that bump there, but it’s too big to just be an artifact, what’s going on? MOM?!
My “m” labels go through tides of desperation with my sleep cycle...near the end of my “functional” periods there are lots of notes like, “That has to be an error, why would it look like that?”, “Should I be worried about this?” and “This one's high in a really awkward place, much like a stoner at a funeral.” Part of my way to keep myself sane was to think up a new emoticon denoting devastation whenever someone said it in a way that we’d have to throw out, like using the wrong contour, or coughing in the middle. If my mentor ever actually reads those (unlikely), I think he’ll get a new perspective on the art of iconography. They included upside-down, upside-right, backwards and to either side.
Halfway through Subject 4, I got the idea that I’d blog about it afterward...and that kept me going through another half or two of data set, stopping every once in a while to take screenshots. Every annoyance or delay was like “BOO-YAH. ANOTHER INTERESTING SENTENCE. I CAN TOTALLY HYPERBOLIZE THAT.”...including that one.
I still burned out.
Not to complain, though...it was just a strange time not many of anyone who’s going to read this will ever experience...and it’s probably the easiest job I could have that would still be intellectually stimulating, and the schedule is lax enough for me to still be awake at 5:00 am (now)...and if I had left myself more time to do it before it was necessary to get crackin’, then I wouldn’t have had such crazy days, but actually, it was rather fun. I’ll try not to do it again, but if I could go back and have the chance to do it once, I’d still do it the first time. I feel like that’s an experience I ought to have had, doing almost-grad work the summer after my sophomore year. And I’m learning a ton! Pretty soon everyone (who works in intonation theory) will start hearing about Tonal Center of Gravity – and if anyone asks, that’s my mentor’s idea, oh yeah. I know that guy. I could get you an autograph...if you’re nice.
Oh and also, Boyfriend and I had a second anniversary. That was fun. More rain than expected. Less being outside than expected. Therefore, more cozy than expected, so it's all good.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Well, that was a PayPal adventure...
Today, my business account got hacked.
I check my email very often, and when I opened it up not an hour ago, I saw "Receipt for your payment to match.com."
Some jerk had used my account to spend over $40 on a month's subscription to match.com, with authorization for automatic renewals. Now, I have nothing against match.com, but that was NOT me. I have a boyfriend, and furthermore, that account is nothing but business. All the money that goes into it is from sales of jewelry. All the money that goes out of it goes toward Etsy fees, supplies, tools and similar things like business cards. That money IS my business. I did NOT want it hacked.
I did a few things. I changed my password and security questions (though there are not many people who both know the name of my childhood best friend AND the name of my first roommate - except my boyfriend and I'm pretty sure he wasn't signing up for match.com - I still changed them just to be safe) and I opened a dispute claim with PayPal. PayPal seems to handle such things with cold ruthless efficiency, which is great in most cases except it didn't inspire in me a lot of confidence that they would believe me. I mean, when you click on the Pay with PayPal button, you log in and then who knows, you know? Nobody can tell if it's the right person or not...and my name is Leo in my PayPal account, not my full first name, so the person could have found that information in my PayPal account, put my name on his picture and still looked plausible to PayPal, and then what would PayPal think?
So, this claim was opened and I had this feeling of impending doom...I mean, after the dispute was officially under way, it said "funds will not be available" - I've heard so many horror stories about trying to get money out of PayPal when something is up with your account on either your end or a buyer's end, and I sort of despaired either of ever seeing my money OR of ever being able to use the account, or the rest of the money that was in it, again.
Well, I called match.com, too. And they handled it much less ruthlessly, efficiently OR coldly. I talked to a very nice man whose name was either Rico or Ricardo - the signal was low and I didn't quite catch it - who said he'd never come across such a thing before, he'd see what he could do. I gave him my details, my PayPal email address, my transaction numbers and what have you...and after a couple brief holds while he talked to his superiors, a cheery lady named Stacy came on and told me all was well. Not only had I been refunded, but my PayPal account and credit card number had been blocked from match.com's systems...so even if I've got some sort of keylogger and the guy has my new password as well, at least he can't use it on THAT anymore...and maybe if he tries it again and I catch him again he'll give up trying to use my account for things - too much effort, I hope.
And the best part of having called match.com is knowing that the guy had his account blocked. I don't know if they'd bother with any sort of investigation into someone using someone else's PayPal account, but you have to admit...for some sort of hacker with at least enough skill to get my username and password together in the same login box, he's kind of an idiot...not only did he not change my passwords or anything, or try to hack my email account as well to prevent me from getting the receipt of payment (lesson learned, by the way - from now on my PayPal email and PayPal account have different passwords), but the thing he bought was something that could be cancelled at any time by the provider...not like if he'd had a TV shipped to him or something...and it was also connected to his name and pictures of him, at least in theory. What was this guy DOING?
Anyway, PayPal immediately closed my case as soon as it detected that the transaction had been refunded, so my account is unlocked and all is right with the world except that there are identity thieves in it. Full day.
Also I may have been bitten by ticks. We'll see how this goes.
I check my email very often, and when I opened it up not an hour ago, I saw "Receipt for your payment to match.com."
Some jerk had used my account to spend over $40 on a month's subscription to match.com, with authorization for automatic renewals. Now, I have nothing against match.com, but that was NOT me. I have a boyfriend, and furthermore, that account is nothing but business. All the money that goes into it is from sales of jewelry. All the money that goes out of it goes toward Etsy fees, supplies, tools and similar things like business cards. That money IS my business. I did NOT want it hacked.
I did a few things. I changed my password and security questions (though there are not many people who both know the name of my childhood best friend AND the name of my first roommate - except my boyfriend and I'm pretty sure he wasn't signing up for match.com - I still changed them just to be safe) and I opened a dispute claim with PayPal. PayPal seems to handle such things with cold ruthless efficiency, which is great in most cases except it didn't inspire in me a lot of confidence that they would believe me. I mean, when you click on the Pay with PayPal button, you log in and then who knows, you know? Nobody can tell if it's the right person or not...and my name is Leo in my PayPal account, not my full first name, so the person could have found that information in my PayPal account, put my name on his picture and still looked plausible to PayPal, and then what would PayPal think?
So, this claim was opened and I had this feeling of impending doom...I mean, after the dispute was officially under way, it said "funds will not be available" - I've heard so many horror stories about trying to get money out of PayPal when something is up with your account on either your end or a buyer's end, and I sort of despaired either of ever seeing my money OR of ever being able to use the account, or the rest of the money that was in it, again.
Well, I called match.com, too. And they handled it much less ruthlessly, efficiently OR coldly. I talked to a very nice man whose name was either Rico or Ricardo - the signal was low and I didn't quite catch it - who said he'd never come across such a thing before, he'd see what he could do. I gave him my details, my PayPal email address, my transaction numbers and what have you...and after a couple brief holds while he talked to his superiors, a cheery lady named Stacy came on and told me all was well. Not only had I been refunded, but my PayPal account and credit card number had been blocked from match.com's systems...so even if I've got some sort of keylogger and the guy has my new password as well, at least he can't use it on THAT anymore...and maybe if he tries it again and I catch him again he'll give up trying to use my account for things - too much effort, I hope.
And the best part of having called match.com is knowing that the guy had his account blocked. I don't know if they'd bother with any sort of investigation into someone using someone else's PayPal account, but you have to admit...for some sort of hacker with at least enough skill to get my username and password together in the same login box, he's kind of an idiot...not only did he not change my passwords or anything, or try to hack my email account as well to prevent me from getting the receipt of payment (lesson learned, by the way - from now on my PayPal email and PayPal account have different passwords), but the thing he bought was something that could be cancelled at any time by the provider...not like if he'd had a TV shipped to him or something...and it was also connected to his name and pictures of him, at least in theory. What was this guy DOING?
Anyway, PayPal immediately closed my case as soon as it detected that the transaction had been refunded, so my account is unlocked and all is right with the world except that there are identity thieves in it. Full day.
Also I may have been bitten by ticks. We'll see how this goes.
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