Heaven in Hard Times

I've yet to figure out exactly wtf it is about Torchwood that, when I've never had any desire to get fannish about any other tv show, makes me want to do all those fan-y things like ficcing and analyzing and making prettypretty icons and wallpapers and shit. But hey, if you're running Leopard and ever feel the need to get comprehensive screen caps taken and cropped down with minimal effort, my weird fannish obsessiveness is your gain! Heck yes.

I spent a good chunk of last night setting up a way to make screen capping easier, because it's way way way not fun to just sit through an episode with my fingers locked on shift-command-3 and then have a couple hundred pictures to edit. I'm not yet obsessive enough to consider that worthwhile.

So step one is to automate the actual capping. I've started working on learning AppleScript, but I'm not particularly far along. I managed to find the bits and pieces I thought I needed, and cobbled them together (and prayed, on first run, my computer wouldn't explode). The text and saving instructions are behind the cut, or you can just download mine.

( timed_caps.app )

Easy enough! Just open the app, it'll ask you where to save, and start capping until you close it.

( So now you've got a folder full of caps... )

I was going to go to bed and save the rest of the Sims stuff for later, but I made the mistake of going through to sort the pictures into some kind of logical storytelling order. Which led to mental storytelling. Which led to omgmustpost. THUS. The first of two "this is what goes on in my Sims' lives you all care so much I know" posts, the "everyone but Marcel and Kreshin, because I'm obsessed and they need their own post" edition. There is NSFWness running rampant, mostly toward the end.

I should also say, more due to a lack of imagination than an abundance of creepy (although, interpret how you will) I tend to use RL wives' and kids' names for the Sim wives and kids. There are a variety of reasons I'm not bothered by that when I am by RL wives and kids in fic. I'm just attempting to avoid catching anyone off-guard :D

First up! It's pretty much a law that anyone with Sims must make themselves. Possibly their friends. Throwing any desire to create even superficial resemblances to the wind, I did just that for BBLEIB - BB, Logan, EH (yours truly), Ice, Bene. Having forgotten how high the "Make me friendly to everyone here" cheat pushes relationships, I (at first) accidentally (then on purpose) turned our house into one of lesbian debauchery. HAWT.
( BBLEIB house )

I forget how, but at some point BB met the charming Phil Lewis. He's gayer than 18 JBJs in a pool full of lube, so of course she fell madly in love, married him, and moved out of the BBLEIB house. I only have one screenshot of Lewis, but it's charming.
( Bowling )

CAN ANYONE COMPETE WITH THE SORDID LEWIS TALE? Not really. Phil Collen, however, is just as much of a manslut as Lewis, so that's something.
( low pants! hot tub! )

The first Sim Phil slept with other than Blaine was JBJ, who also has a 20-sim woohoo goal.
( Underpants )

Also in college are two of David and Sav's other kids (they also have three "child" kids), and Phil's son.
( College kids )

Rory's best buddy is Nathen of Flogging Molly, who lives with Mel (an OC of mine he's in love with) and Viv (her husband, who he's actually almost equally in love with). They have three little girls: two of Viv and Mel's and one of Nathen's.
( punching bag )

There are two other Mollys in the neighborhood: ( Bridget, who's married to Tico )

and Matt, who lives with his wife Shelly. ( They actually have one of the more interesting stories )

Nicko, all fired up from the rather debauched party, wandered on home, where the debauchery...well, actually, there's way more of it.
( The dirty dirty Maiden house )

From the most debauched to the least, the last set of shots I have to babble about are Sav and David.
( Adorableness, Bad Genes )

Hoooooly shit that's a lot of useless babble about pixels. I'm going to bed now! Marcel and Kreshin tomorrow. AREN'T YOU EXCITED. I BET YOU ARE.

I'm not a huge TV watcher, and because there are so few shows I'm into I don't operate on a "TV schedule" - the few shows I watch, I'm always missing because I don't think of it until I look at the clock and realize I've missed all but ten minutes. And once I miss enough episodes, I'll give up entirely.

TVShows (can be downloaded from its iusethis page) has rekindled my love of the few shows I bother with, and while it's probably not the best thing I have one more excuse to waste my life in front of the computer, it's still an awesome app.

It's an automatic torrent search app - you open it, choose a tv show to subscribe to, and it'll ask you where you want to start: with the next aired episode, or an older one. Lather, rinse, repeat for however many shows you want, then quit. TVShows will keep its search running unobtrusively in the background, and automatically download and open a torrent file when it finds one for the next episode (the timing varies; I get new Simpsons episodes within half an hour of airing, Lost usually shows up Friday morning).

The one thing you need to know is if you have Opera installed (which you do if you have Adobe CS3), TVShows will automatically try opening the torrents in Opera. Easy enough to fix, just right-click > Get Info on one of the torrent files, tell it to Open With [torrent app of choice] and Change All.

For the non-Mac users: The Lifehacker post where I found TVShows mentions a Windows alternative.

I've posted the question on a couple JavaScript forums I googled up, but I'll pick the brains of the nerdier portion of my flist, too:

I've got a nice getElementsByClassName function working, but my problem is I don't want ALL elements with a given class name, I just want the ones with a blank value attribute.

Specifically, what I want is to:

1. Find all elements where class="character"


2. Create an array of those elements where class="character" and value=""


3. Change the value of the first [x] items in the array to [x] number of variables I've set

I've got 3 all set, but at the moment, since the array includes all the elements, if the first three (I'm working with a group of three right now, but I'll be using this same code for groups of varying numbers) aren't blank it simply skips them and only fills in those which ARE blank.

So I have:

[This input box has a value]
[So does this one]
[(No value)]

{Pretty Button Which Invokes Function}

And I get an array of the input boxes, the function says First Array Item gets assigned a value of "Name 1" if it's blank, Second Array Item gets assigned a value of "Name 2" if it's blank, and Third Array Item gets "Name 3" if it's blank, the code I have now sees that First and Second aren't blank and simply skips them, filling Third in with "Name 3".

What I WANT to happen is for First and Second to be left out of the array, so the first item actually in the array is the blank third box, meaning it'll be filled in with "Name 1".

Is that possible?

(And, uh, lemme know if my explanation is horrible and convoluted and hard to follow)

I've reached new levels of dork.

I have "Turbo Lover" stuck in my head and Gina wanted to cuddle, so she's been treated to several rounds of..."you're my kitty kitt-ay".

*dorkdorkdork*

I FINISHED MY JAVA FINAL OMG

omgomgomg yay

omg

(I didn't finish my research paper, though. Not even CLOSE)

I meant to post this on Thursday, but I forgot.

I had a Java test. Wanna know what I got on said test?

100

Word, bitches. Who da man?

I da man.

*cough*

Right.

*sigh* I've been really good about drinking decaf lately, but cafe la france has this awesome Kahlua-flavored coffee that doesn't come in decaf and I've had a few cups. And this morning I forgot to order decaf.

It's interesting. I haven't totally cut caffeine out of my diet - I'm eating a pretty significant amount of chocolate - but every time I have a caffeinated coffee I go through the "OMGSUPERHYPER omgsupercrash OMGcaffeinewithdrawal" cycle. Not so fun. You'd think I'd learn.

Today was my last day at the Y. I think Josh got fired, he wasn't there last week or today, and this week his mail slot didn't have his name on it anymore and he had no time card. :/

It was totally uneventful and insanely draining. Plus the commute home was dreadful. Whee.

I have to do a research project on Piet Mondrian. If you don't know, he's the one who does the paintings that are just black lines and primary colors that are most often victims of the "why the fuck is this art a retarded kindergarten kid with a ruler could do this in five minutes" thing. Whee.

I love his work, though. And my project is going to be kickass. So nyah.

I'm tempted to write it in a hugely unprofessional tone. "Petey, as nobody called him, had a sweet beard, and his wife was pretty hot. A retarded kindergartener with a ruler can easily replicate his paintings. ART ROOLZ. The end."

I wonder if I can muster the energy to go to Shaw's and get some food.

Probably not.

I have a Java midterm tomorrow (well, today, but who's counting?)

I am going to fail. And fail hard. I will fail so violently my poor ancestors sitting around campfires in their loincloths will look at each other, and one will utter "Damn, that bitch failed Java HARDCORE" and thus language will be invented.

Ignore me. I've been studying for yeeeeeears.

So it's kind of amazing how easily "The Call" (Backstreet Boys, yo) transitions into "Armageddon It" (not the Backstreet Boys, yo). I didn't even notice it was a different song until I took a second to think and realized I was singing different words.

One of the most disappointing moments of my academic career was the time a professor asked "are you getting this?" and I said "I'm-a gettin' it" and no one picked up on it. At least it amused ME.

I think I'll skip newswriting tomorrow. So I can study. Whoo ha.

My midterm for Perspectives in Graphic Design was due today (yesterday). Waaay easier than stupid Java, all I had to do was design a font:

( omg pretty )

It needs work. But I think I'm gonna end up doing the capital letters and some punctuation and making it a functional font. OMG yay.

Enough babble. Away with me.