I'll be over here with the stone-age tribesmen

[gwyn]

It would be hard to overstate how stupid I am. People think I'm smart because I have a big vocabulary, but that's all smoke and mirrors. A few years ago, curious to know what my IQ was, since I'd never taken an IQ test as a kid (mom did not believe in things like that), I found the primary test online and took it. My score was so low that they didn't even give it to me; instead they recommended I try again later after studying. I know part of my failure is that it's heavily math and spatial/pattern recognition oriented, which I can't do. If they had an IQ test that was all about punctuation and dangling modifiers and history and pop culture trivia, I'd be chair of Mensa by now. But most of it is simply that I'm not very bright.

This is always most evidenced by computers. In the olden dayes, when computers were first coming into households, instead of being the size of households, I was quite the user. Then they got to be more sophisticated than just shoving in a floppy disk (the big old 5-1/4", remember those?) and typing in a word processor, and I fell far behind. It's really proof that a thousand monkeys using iMovie could come up with a vid, because if I can actually figure out even the mom and pop vidding program on OS X and make vids, then seriously, any creature with opposable thumbs could do it. I constantly boggle my own tiny mind by the fact that I've managed to squeeze out four vids on the infernal machine, because it's much more than pressing buttons and developing a sense of timing, which was pretty much all I needed, and had, on VCR vidding.

My dad gave me a camcorder for my b-day/Christmas present, which arrived Friday. Mostly he gave it to me because he wants his own back, which I've been using to make vids since I finally got a system that allows me to make vids digitally, but also, this one has full passthrough, so no more wear and tear on the moving parts, at least in theory. It's a lovely toy, very nice looking, with a Carl Zeiss lens and more bells and whistles than I can begin to understand what to do with. It's smaller than my hand, the size of my palm, actually. And it takes still photos to a memory stick. Not having anything to take photos of except the cat, she became the source of my digital photography inaugural efforts.

I spent almost two days trying to upload the photos to the web. I have an iMac with a very simple, do it all for you mom and pop photo program called iPhoto, and I couldn't figure it out. The normally excellent Help was totally above my head, and I couldn't figure out why the photos kept disappearing. After two days of struggling and driving myself to tears of frustration, and not really having anyone to ask for help from in all capital letters, I finally, by sheer accident, got the pictures of the kitty up on my web space. And with some help from the lovely and kind tiashome, I think I get the LJ linking thing a little more, though the pics here, if they work, are going to be huge because that sizing thing may just end up being a few lessons in trying and retrying until I get it by accident (it involves actual math, don't ya know). I'm not sure if this will work, but these are two pics of the puss. She's a psycho, but she's a cute psycho.





If these don't come up on remote loading, if you really want to see the cat, which I know you don't, the pics are at this page


And I wanted to thank owlrigh for the months of extra user pics you so kindly gave me! That was just such a sweet, thoughtful thing to do, and came at a really frustrating and kind of downer time for me. Now I have to go find some cool icons to add to the collection and make it worth the while! Thank you, thank you, for your gift.

Comments

[rainkatt.livejournal.com]

I can see one, but not the second... and the other link doesn't work, at least not for me...

And she's adorable... I love the kitty pics...

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it took me like twelve tries to figure it out, but I think they're all fixed now (links and loading). See what I mean? Even the Dummies books are too advanced for me!

[rainkatt.livejournal.com]

Now I can see both. She is way cute!

You're not alone. I have a lot of trouble with internet stuff, and you should have seen my LJ when I first started... I'd post, and it would look insane, so I'd edit, and on and on... still stuff I don't get... but I keep fumbling along. I haven't tried posting pictures yet, partly because I don't have a place to put them, but also because I find the whole thing confusing.

[superplin.livejournal.com]

Your kitty is adorable! And cats are no fun if they're not psycho. Well-adjusted felines are flat-out boring. ;)

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, I'm not sure what I'd do with a well-adjusted cat. I think we've only ever had one in my whole life! Though my friends have happy and friendly cats... so I know they're out there.

She's also newly svelte, though it's hard to see in the pics -- she used to be quite the pear, but after her reduction diet, she lost about the equivalent of 30 lbs. for a human!

[barkley.livejournal.com]

I was just looking through my iPhoto library the other day in order to delete unnecessary stuff, and I noticed that my first two rolls I put on there were duplicated because I kept thinking that they disappeared on me and I re-imported them. *g* I've got the hang of it now, but that's just because I'm a mad digital camera person now. You should always feel free to e-mail me in big capital frustrated letters!

I still haven't figured out the VCD thing yet. I don't have enough room on my harddrive to convert the whole file to a .dv file, and I haven't had time to look to see if I could find a .avi splitter to just get a clip here or there. But when I do... *g*

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I feel so bad because I bug you SO MUCH! I figure at some point, you're going to start filtering my mails. ;-) I keep thinking that somewhere along the line, all this digital stuff will make sense, but it never seems to happen. I was actually quite pleased with myself just for being able to get the keys and use them to get QT Pro -- not that I know how to use QT Pro, just that I could figure the keys out!

I'm so lucky to know people like you and Killa, who are so generous with their knowledge and experience. I think if it wasn't for you guys, I'd be tying the slipnoose right about now.

[soundingsea.livejournal.com]

Don't feel stupid. Those IQ tests don't measure anything that has applicability in the real world.

And your kitty is so cute! I always like to see pix of fluffy kitties. *turns to pile of smiling goo*

Does your cat always have to climb inside any available cardboard box? And then possibly attack it, for the crime of being cardboard? Mine are nuts that way.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I don't know which she loves more -- being kitty in a box, or kitty in a bag. The instant a box is opened, she has to climb inside and sit. Bags get sat in and stalked. So far, she's only attacked a box once, but I think she stopped because a flap opened and scared her, so she thinks they attack back!

And don't even get me started on the tissue paper!

[soundingsea.livejournal.com]

So cute! Hmm, so she doesn't see cardboard as a mortal enemy then. You're spared all the shredded cardboard on the floor. But I bet she makes up for it with the tissue paper.

As for bags, that made me think of an old picture of our Iria in a takeout bag! See the crazy tiny kitten (http://arioch.org/~bridget/iriabag5.jpg) before she got much, much bigger.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

SOOOO cute! Are those blue eyes I see, or just the shadow? The thing I love about cats in boxes or bags is that whole thought process of "If I can't see you, you can't see me." Quelle adorable!

[soundingsea.livejournal.com]

Her eyes are actually green. I think it was just the shadow. And yep! They really think they can hide in a bag. Cause you know, brown paper sacks naturally rustle on their own!

[onetwomany.livejournal.com]

Awww…your cat is so, so, so, so cute!!! And psycho cats are the best kind.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

She really is just the apple of my eye. As mean as she is (she's seriously violent at times, and is quite a biter in the break flesh and make you bleed way), I still adore her more than anything.

[elinora.livejournal.com]

If they had an IQ test that was all about punctuation and dangling modifiers and history and pop culture trivia, I'd be chair of Mensa by now. But most of it is simply that I'm not very bright.


One of my teachers in my last year of high school was married to a woman who was doing her Masters on the application of standardized admissions tests. Every week she would come to our class and we'd take a few tests. By the end of the year almost the entire class was scoring way way way up the Mensa chart. It had nothing to do with intelligence, but was simply the result of knowing how to write these tests. I still score very well on them, even though I may know very little about the subject.

Your kitty-kat is too cute for words.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's amazing -- i can't even imagine taking tests that often! But that would be cool, to know the drill so well you feel brilliant when you come out of it. Now *there* would be an egoboo I could live with.

[paratti.livejournal.com]

That's a lovely cat.

[blue-larkspur.livejournal.com]

Your cat is so cute! I love the pic of her by the wall. She looks like she's staking out a suspect -- she's "sleuth kitty". I love black and white cats -- there's one down the street that follow me all the time, and even though I know it's a cat and I meow to it, I always want to say "moo" because it's black and white.

See, I'm psycho and I'm not even a cat. :)

What's her name?

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Her name is Emma. She actually is something of a stealth kitty -- the other night, she attacked movies_michelle when we were making a lot of noise because michelle had whacked her knee on my coffee table, and I think Emma thought it was some kind of attack drill. She sneaks up on me at the damnedest times, and she's always peering around corners or through doors to find something she can bite or shred, usually my hands.

[scarlettgirl.livejournal.com]

Then they got to be more sophisticated than just shoving in a floppy disk (the big old 5-1/4", remember those?) and typing in a word processor

You've just described me in your whole post. Except for the fact that you're light years ahead of me when it comes to technology.

Seriously. I left the work force (and lots and lots of free training) nearly eight years ago and all I can see is dust of rampant technology passing me by. Somehow or other I changed something on my MSN photo program now everytime I download and icon it only saves as a bitmap image and when I go in and save it as a jpeg image it loses all animation capabilites. For the life of me I don't know why this is happening all of a sudden nor can I fix it. Of course, it only took me days to figure out how to download icons in the first place. And custom mood sets? I can't figure out the find/replace thing. And let's not even go into customizing journals.

So, to recap. You are light years ahead of many, many, many people.

And standardized tests are lying bastards. Don't buy into the hype.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean about the icons -- I can never save the animated ones, either, and everything comes up as a bmp, but somehow I ended up with this little photo editor that at least allows me to grab the still ones and save as .jpg.

I did find out one thing -- apparently animated icons have to be .gif format. Not that I know how to download them when they're set up as bmps, but, at least that's what someone told me. I rely on my friends with Photoshop, but unfortunately, mostly, it's a crapshoot. Sigh. Kindness of strangers and all.

[owlrigh.livejournal.com]

Such a cute kitty. Makes me wish all over again I had one.

About the icons: I like your selection, had some time, and looked through my friends list to see who would probably like it the best, and thought you would. I'm glad you liked it :)

[tiashome.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I could help, chica -- you did a great job!

And that patch of white on your kitty's chest is so unusual -- it almost looks like a long beard in that first pic. She's really adorable ;-)

[kumi.livejournal.com]

Merry Christmas! I wish you have a wonderful happy holiday!

::smooch::

aww

[talking-sock.livejournal.com]

Hey, I popped over because you've been quiet and it's the sucky holidays and it makes everyone crazy... Anyway, glad to see you got the camera and did take some pics (and how cute!). I did order you Photoshope Elements, by the way, because I think it's awesome and useful. It won't come in till after Xmas. I'm off for my sister's, but let's hang when I'm back next week if you're free?

Lynn

Re: aww

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think it's going to be a very experimental process -- and the truth is, the regular camera will be better, because there are a lot of issues with this thing taking pictures the way they should. But at least i can stick something online! ;-)

I hope you have an okay holiday -- at least tolerable, but maybe with luck ever better than that. And yes, let's get together after hols -- I have a whole week off until Jan 4!!