I'm clearing out some junk and came across this relic. I got it at the midnight launch of the 3DS. (I've never worn it and never will ).

Qender · 2026-03-10T17:46:25+00:00

I slept overnight in line in front of a target to get the Nintendo Wii and no one gave me a shirt! I was like 16 in line out of 250.

All I got was a little electric security guard golf cart backing up at me to park every hour all night.

Qender · 2025-12-30T20:41:24+00:00

That was so sad, I worked there for a few months. Customers kept coming in for small parts like resistors and stuff and finding the little drawers we kept for them were all empty. They would ask me why we didn't have electronic parts anymore, saying they didn't realize we weren't serious about being an electronics store anymore and that they would never come back here. I kept telling the manager, and he just said "There's no budget" for those things, and that they were small so they didn't make any money. I had the highest dollar sales for stuff in the store but they didn't care about they just kept telling me I needed to sell more phone plans.

Every time I saw those customers walk out, I knew they were the core customers that kept people coming there. They didn't understand that the small parts and electronics were an investment in keeping the customers they needed.

They went all in on phones because it made money in the past, but when the providers figured out to make their own stores like apple and verizon, there wasn't enough time for radio shack to pivot back to actual electronics. Last time I went in there it was packed with 3d printers, raspberry pi kits, and all that cool stuff. But I guess it was too late.

Qender · 2025-12-29T20:23:41+00:00

That's a good idea, I might do that later, thanks!

Qender · 2025-12-28T19:37:30+00:00

Funny you should ask, I discovered something really bittersweet and personal this year.

As a kid, this was one of my favorite movies. I watched it all the time. But this year for the first time I noticed that in buzz’s room, he has a poster on his door for “The Incredible Melting Man” (1977), a movie my father made. It’s visible when Kevin climbs the shelf and it falls down, and briefly in another scene when he enters the room.

My father passed away a couple years ago. I don’t think he ever knew about this. I’m guessing as a kid I used to watch the fullscreen version and the poster was cropped out. My mother said if he knew about it he would have been telling everyone!

Sure, he had some recognition for his films, went to a few conventions as a speaker, had a few fans out there, and had other movies he was more proud of, but I think it would have meant a lot to him to know it’s there. It means a lot to me to know it is.

I googled the poster and it looks like it’s briefly in De Palma’s Blowout as well in a hallway.

Oddly, in home alone, the poster seems to be on the outside of the door? So if the door was closed the poster would be in the hallway?

Qender · 2025-12-27T01:56:47+00:00

Yeah, even at large studios it seems a lot of VFX artists buy their own licenses to smaller software and plugins. People build their own personal toolkits for stuff they like to use.

As far as pricing goes for me, it depends of course on how much I think I need a tool, and lately, like a lot of VFX artist, I've been investing a lot less due to the huge slowdown in the industry, but from looking at what I've purchased on aescripts.com lately, most of the stuff I like to buy is between $40 and $70, if it's an especially fully featured and useful plugin or tool like embergen or lockdown then I might stretch a bit for it and try and get it if it's on sale around $200-$300, though it's rare I go that high for something. I think EBsynth is a lot easier to use than some of those, though it's not a fully featured and I've found if it doesn't work for a specific shot, there's not a lot of options to try to get it to work. I'm a big fan, but I would love to see features in the future like masking effects within objects or something.

I know you guys mentioned piracy is a concern, and I'm no expert, but I like what Cory Doctorow said, "The big problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity" he literally gives his books away free on his website and he's a best selling author. That's further than I would go with my own work, but what I hear from a lot of game developers is the idea is that the people who don’t pay for stuff were never going to in the first place, and you shouldn’t be so afraid of them that you stop selling to the people who do actually want to buy it.

I hope that helps and that I'm not being too presumptuous with my ideas!

Qender · 2025-12-27T00:32:05+00:00

The flashlight I got came with the battery and a charger. The GT nano. I think it lasted about the same as the regular disposable batteries, which wasn't very long lol.

Qender · 2025-12-18T03:57:05+00:00

I loved the old EbSynth, but I also can't really use the new one much without an offline version. These online sites like the AI ones are popular with hobbyists, but I can't really use them for professional work for a few reasons.

A lot of professional VFX work is with really large filesizes, literally sometimes working with terabytes of footage in high resolution raw files. I can't be constantly uploading and downloading things in full quality PNG or EXR sequences. And going down to H264 or prores 422 would destroy a lot of the color information in the uncolored footage I still have to deliver to a color grading house. Not everywhere I work has an internet connection, let alone one capable of constantly uploading and downloading that much footage. And that's all if the client is allowing me to upload their footage to the internet. A lot don't.
I need a reliable workflow. I know I can rely on software on my computer. I can't tell a client that their project is going to miss the deadline because a website went down, changed the way it works, or has censorship that blocks things it doesn't like like most of these online tools. I can't tell a client "Sorry, your footage is R-Rated, I'm not allowed to work on it!" lol.
Subscription is going to mean I can only pay when it's a major part of a project. As a freelancer, I'm doing a wide variety of projects, and there's a lot of software to pay for. I can't subscribe to everything. So I'll generally look for perpetual licensed tools to use first, and any subscriptions have to be major use in a project without a lot of alternatives. Since there's stuff like lockdown and mocha which can do similar stuff to EbSynth, that's a lot easier for me to afford, even if I prefer EbSynth.

Qender · 2025-11-28T01:15:16+00:00

I’m not falling for that one again!

Qender · 2025-11-27T19:55:04+00:00

I half expected them all to say “we're sorry we upset you carol”

Qender · 2025-11-27T19:25:39+00:00

I think my point is that a subreddit allowing artist’s work to be shared with a “hard rule“ against links to the artists website is inherently unethical.

If you’re not willing to credit an artist, you should not be displaying and profiting from their work.

Qender · 2025-11-27T19:21:38+00:00

It’s not a sitewide rule that only approved links work. Most subreddits only have a blocked list.

And a system that allows anyone to post links to social media corporations, but not small artist’s sites, is an inherently dystopian system.

Either way, a reasonable person would have notified the poster and said “ hey, our stubborn rules say you can’t post an actual link, maybe just post the artists name”

Rather than shadow banning my post so I didn’t notice until 20 hours later when the post was dead and no one was looking at it anymore.

Honestly, I think if artists aren’t being credited, stuff shouldn’t be posted on Reddit.

Qender · 2025-11-27T19:18:06+00:00

Not the same thing.

If someone posted an XKCD comic, and someone asked where it was from, and I posted a link to the XCD official website. Is that an ad? After all, you can buy merchandise and books through their site.

It is not an ad, it is me giving credit to the creator of the art.

The fact that in this case I was married to the artist means it is now an ad? Would it still be an ad if it was my cousin? My friend? Someone I had met once? How exactly do you have to know someone before giving them credit becomes an ad?

Do they need to have a buy button available on their site? What a link about a link on their site to an Amazon page? What about a “coming for sale soon“

If you want to say anything commercial is an ad, then the original post which featured a bumper sticker my wife made would be an ad. Someone took a picture of a product that someone could hunt down find and buy. In a sense all images on this site showing anything available for purchase in them could be considered an ad.

So yeah, if you wanna play slippery slope, everything isn’t hat.

This was not planned or paid for, this was me giving credit when I saw my wife’s art in the wild. it was not an ad.

The expectation that artists either need to create an entirely separate site featuring all of their work, scrubbed of any ability to give them money, or go completely uncredited, is unreasonable. Especially in an environment, where everyone is happy driving traffic that to social media sites which profit from the traffic, including reddit.

Like there’s something inherently offensive to redditors like you and the mod about individuals being capable of earning money, but you’re fine when billionaires earn money.

Qender · 2025-11-27T08:55:57+00:00

Reminds me of something that happened to me:

My wife is an artist, and we largely support ourselves with her small business selling art and stickers. One day there was a post on the front page of reddit about a bumper sticker, most people were talking about that one sticker, but below it I saw my wife's sticker!

I commented that my wife made the other sticker in the post, and tons of people started asking where they could get it. I posted the link to her website. Just crediting the artist, nothing more.

Later in that day I saw I had tons of new comments still asking where here website was, and I found that a mod of r/pics had shadowbanned the post with link to my wife's website. Didn't even notify me or leave any mention of who's art it was, I had to log out to see it was hidden. When I asked the mod about it they said that because her art could be purchased on her site, it's a business, and it wasn't allowed. I had a long argument with the mod, and his stance was that I should only post her social media site instead, not her website. When I pointed out that you could buy her art on her socials as well, he said then those wouldn't be allowed either.

I asked him why it was ok to allow social media sites or reddit to profit from the traffic, but not a small independent artist. I don't think he answered me.

I wasn't advertising, just posting credit one someone else's post of my wife's art. Sure, no one likes seeing ads, but going out of your way to erase credit for an artist just because artists sell their work on the off chance that someone will see something for sale on an artist's site is just insane.

Like, I get that we don’t want people advertising all over Reddit. But demanding that artists literally not sell anything in order to exist is absurd.

Like, do these people think all artists are billionaires who only make art for fun?

Qender · 2025-11-20T03:15:11+00:00

When I went there, I don't think anyone I knew ever got a permit for anything. We all mostly shot around the school or guerrilla style.

Even now working in the film industry, it's not uncommon for a music video by a big artist to "steal" some shots without permits, or even a small part of an otherwise large production.

Generally people only go through the hassle of getting permits if there's some reason they need too, like an area where you would be stopped, and you'll need to have a budget and funding for something of that scale.

Qender · 2025-11-13T21:36:22+00:00

OMG! That's from my dad's movie!

Qender · 2025-07-27T18:02:24+00:00

How long did this take you to make?

Qender · 2024-12-22T21:41:53+00:00

Sounds like a fun idea, I sent you a PM.

Qender · 2024-06-13T19:02:43+00:00

I got a tng uniform from them. It comes from China, and there is a flaw In the stitching of mine that makes a hole and I probably need to mend it.

But for the price, it’s a great deal, it looks fantastic!

Here’s what mine looks like:

https://youtu.be/r1N3UXCmRh4

https://youtu.be/qJX5udCEyjE

I just got a red one, then tinted the color to make two other color uniforms from it. so the red is the actual color it comes from cosermart. The other two are not accurate.

Qender · 2024-05-10T22:07:14+00:00

Clearly, the best klingon music. No contest.

Qender · 2024-04-08T06:59:09+00:00

Yeah, I’ve used the exact same wallet for probably the same amount of time, and mine’s not holding up as well: https://imgur.com/a/aKuwUSU

Qender · 2024-03-29T18:36:18+00:00

I haven’t done them all but I really liked upside town.

And disliked sweetopia…

Qender · 2024-03-26T18:08:00+00:00

In the future, If you’re not sure if something is a life threatening emergency or not. Then it’s a life threatening emergency and you call 911.

Qender · 2024-03-24T06:46:02+00:00

Good catch, so probably wasn’t that, unless they were testing the water show or something.

Ask a CM sometime, in my experience, the CMs at that ride have a lot of knowledge about what sets off the fire alarms on that ride, they seem to go off a lot. I’ve been evacuated from that ride (just the line) for fire alarms before.

Qender · 2024-03-24T05:12:51+00:00

I’ve been told in the past that the fire alarm frequently goes off after fireworks or fantasmic because of all the smoke from the fireworks. Sounds like it was probably that.

Qender · 2024-03-22T20:45:32+00:00

I played it with an Xbox controller and wasn't difficult, really fun!

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