More thoughts on drawing programs

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I really want to make comics again. But none of the drawing programs I’ve tried have been suitable. They’re all overcomplex in ways that don’t help with the drawing process, or buggy, or have enormously troublesome user interface issues.

I used to use Photoshop but it’s gotten unwieldy, slow, and expensive. There were many really nice things in it which most drawing programs fall incredibly flat on.

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Armodafinil followup

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Just a followup, I ended up staying awake for over 25 hours, finally fell asleep for a bit today at 10, woke up again at 11, and mostly I’m feeling like I have a gigantic hangover.

Apparently armodafinil’s mechanism of action is identical to cocaine’s, so it actually IS stimulant-based and not just “a wakefulness agent” and I wish i’d known that before embarking on this. I don’t know why my research failed me this badly this time. Probably me being desperate for something that works.

I’m definitely not interested in continuing with armodafinil, in any case. Advice for dealing with this massive pounding headache would be appreciated.

sleepless from armodafinil

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i feel like crap and i;m wide awake and i want to sleep but i can;t sleep

i;ve been having electric pains through my nerves all night and i feel like i drank three pots of coffee and i am not sleepy at all but i am very very tired

on the plus side i’m having no apnea symptoms tonight but that’s because i’m not getting into a state of relaxation which allows it to occur in the first place

why is my body so awful at processing medications

An open letter to Sahil Lavingia re: NFTs

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I am against NFTs.

I am an investor in Gumroad, not because I expect my shares to ever be worth anything but because I love Gumroad’s mission. It’s probably the best place online for independent creators to sell both digital and physical goods. Every now and then I look to see what other merch-fulfillment options exist out there, and none of them are nearly as fair to creators as Gumroad. The next-best one is Etsy, which charges monthly per-item listing fees and is part of a bigger problem with long-tail economics in this day and age. I do not have an Etsy store, or any plans to open one. (Most of my physical merch I sell on Storenvy just because I’ve been too lazy to migrate it over to Gumroad. Storenvy is pretty awful too, although for different reasons than Etsy.)

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Charting my armodafinil response

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Just to keep track of stuff here for onlookers

Time Systolic Diastolic HR Notes
9:11 120 76 59 Just took dose
9:13 119 78 59 Validation check
10:01 136 90 52 Felt it starting to kick in
10:02 132 86 51
10:20 130 93 52 Feeling a bit bad
10:38 142 99 55 Feeling quite bad
10:46 147 102 54 hi
10:50 136 67 64 the ratio
10:59 140 100 54 am i going to die?
11:17 148 87 50 yeah probably
11:21 151 91 54 if i hit 160 I’m going to the hospital
11:30 156 95 55 really shouldn’t have taken this on an empty stomach, huh
11:38 158 96 55 but hey at least I’m very much awake
11:56 171 109 61 911 is being called right now
12:15 170 87 68 EMTs don’t seem to be very worried
12:17 152 89 60 Called doctor, seems the EMTs were right
12:20 156 96 65
12:26 144 86 60 Out of the woods? I’m feeling better but just shaken
12:57 142 89 57 Still feeling really shaky but at least I’m pretty sure I’m not gonna die today
14:36 145 94 56 feeling like garbage but I also still haven’t eaten which might have something to do with it
16:56 147 91 62 still feeling shitty but at least I’m stable, hopefullY I sleep really good tonight
18:56 139 86 62
23:46 137 01 59 bedtime

Armodafinil, day 1

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A few weeks ago I learned about armodafinil as an alternate non-stimulant ADHD treatment; this seemed pretty compelling to me because stimulant-based meds have always been troublesome for me for various reasons.

Unfortunately, it’s only off-label for ADHD; fortunately it’s on-label for a bunch of other conditions I have, and the theory of it working for ADHD is that it treats underlying sleep conditions that make ADHD worse, rather than treating the ADHD itself.

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My comment on COLC-2021-0009-0001

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There is an open call for commentary on some pendidng legislation. Here is what I submitted:

As an independent musician, I often run into many problems with automated copyright enforcement online. Quite often I’ll upload a music video to YouTube containing only my own original work, but then I get a copyright strike because the drum beat or some incidental noise happened to match something on a major label track. The recourse for this is to appeal the copyright strike, and YouTube almost always finds in favor of the record label, as they have huge amounts of money and I do not.

Similar issues are faced by individual photographers who take photographs of well-known landmarks, being issued takedown notices because their photograph happened to closely match a similar photo owned by Getty Images or the like. For that matter, Getty Images often assumes they own photos that independent journalists put on their articles, when those photographs were taken specifically for the article.

There are also many content creators who create videos which include thorough academic analyses of copyrighted work, completely within the bounds of fair use, but algorithmic copyright detection filters do not understand any nuance when it comes to the difference between analysis and outright copying. In one particularly ironic case, Adam Neely made a video in defense of Warner Media regarding a copyright dispute over a song, and then Warner Media flagged that video – for the part of it which wasn’t even owned by Warner!

The copyright system is also often abused to prevent discussion of important issues, and copyright reporting mechanisms are often used as an end-run around anti-SLAPP measures.

Algorithmic copyright matching needs to come with extreme human oversight. While an algorithmic match can and should be used to inform people about potential infringement, it should never be used as an automated means of preventing access to a work, legal or otherwise.

If you care at all about the garbage clusterfuck that is the US copyright system, please share your comments in advance of the public consultation by February 8, 2022.

Fully-introduced to the Leaf now

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When my Leaf arrived, the front camera wasn’t working, meaning the self-driving functionality was nonfunctional. Today I took it to the nearest Nissan dealership to get it looked at, and fortunately it was just that the camera had gotten disconnected somehow. 5 hours and $280 later (most of which will be reimbursed by Carvana) I have a car with level 2 self driving.

And holy moly, level 2 self-driving is weird, in a good way. It can’t handle all driving even in its limited situation (nor should it) but it does an amazing job of maintaining speed and safe following distance and position within the lane. And it always errs on the side of caution; if it doesn’t have a clear view of the lane markers, it turns off (and lets you know!), and goes into lane-keep alert mode instead.

There’s a bunch of road on the way home which has had construction going on for as long as I’ve lived here, and the lanes are all weird. When driving there, the lane-keep alert made sure I was aware I was drifting between lanes, but used a perfect level of tactile notification, which made perfect sense. And when lane keeping became available again, it was so surreal (but cool) to feel the steering wheel automatically turn for me.

It’s a really cool experience, and I feel like it’s implemented in a safe way that’s not likely to have the Tesla problem of just like, you know, randomly swerving into trucks/medians/oncoming traffic.

It handles all of the parts of driving that make me anxious.

Also having the full wraparound camera makes parking much easier.

So anyway. Yeah. I like it.

Sleep stuff, heart stuff, blood sugar blues

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After the first few days with the ring I was finding my sleep to be pretty awful, and I was noticing that I was waking up quite frequently. Some of it seems to be due to apnea coming and going, but last night while just lying in bed totally awake I started getting “please move” vibrations even though I was definitely breathing, and the ring said my SpO2 was a perfectly-healthy 98%.

But! My heart rate was dropping under 45, which was the configured notification for that.

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