Morrigan Kig

IFTTT have now imposed a subscription model which means my preferred way to crosspost across my main social networks has become harder.

I do not agree with their decision so have deleted my IFTTT accounts. But now need alternatives to crossposting.

Only one free tool so far allows crossposting without too much hassle, and that's Hootsuite.

The tool allows you to hook up three social networks (more if you pay) and you can post to all three at the same times. I hooked up Twitter, Facebook Pages and Instagram.

You can post text and it will post to all the networks you specified. Of course Instagram won't allow text-only posts as it's an image-centric network.

Images that are out of effective aspect ratio can be edited within Hootsuite, but that will butcher the quality of the image (see my MTG Alice pics on Twitter to see what I mean)

There is a bit of a catch with Instagram. You cannot post to Instagram from Hootsuit directly unless you link a Facebook page to your Instagram account. You can still post to Instagram without it -- you just need the Hootsuite app on your phone, and then use the app to finalise and do the actual post to Instagram (from your phone).

I use Twitter, Facebook Pages and Instagram as my social networks and a Wordpress blog (obviously, since you're reading this)

Instagram has a crosspost functionality within the app, but it is horrendously bad. It just posts a link on your Twitter feed or Facebook feed and you're then reliant on the viewer's client interpreting it properly. Some clients will not preview the link unless you open up the Tweet. TweetDeck is notorious for this. Twitter's Web Client is better, and some mobile Twitter apps (Plume, Fenix, Carbon) are pretty good at previewing links out of the box./

That's why when I crosspost, I prefer having a copy of the media posted with the tweet. IFTTT did this automatically, and I liked that. Using Hootsuite posts the media independently of each social network. So Twitter, Facebook and Instagram all get their own copy of the media uploaded, no crosslinking required.

Wordpress, however, is a bit more annoying. It does provide crossposting onto Twitter. However, it, like Instagram, just puts a link of the blog article , and does not paste a copy of any image on your article, or lets you choose which image (if any) from your article to use. You can, however, modify the tweet text, but that's about it.

A new feature, however, has been added to Wordpress that allows you post your blog entry as a series of tweets, and looks like you can embed pictures during that thread and they should upload, I haven't tried that yet.

There is another tool that I have seen mentioned called Huginn, but I've not checked that out in detail. It does look pretty complicated to use though.

My neighbor updated me on her insurance claim from the accident earlier this year where 3 cars were written off, and another was damaged.

TL;DR: DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE, IT WILL COST YOU MORE THAN THE DRINK

I now have a rough total of how much the drunk driver is going to have to pay:

Write-off of 3 cars: $4000 + $3400 + $2000 = $9400
Repair of the 4th car: $2000
Hire Car (45 days @ $100 per day): $4500
Total Cost: $15900

So, that $10 drink is now going to cost him $16K.

Oh, and the costs only include my hire car. I know one of the other two drivers opted not to get a hire car, even though he was entitled to it. Not sure about the third.

Also, I don't know if the drunk driver's own car got written off, or got repaired, both of which also has costs, so add that to the $16K

Sorry about the double-posting you've been seeing from me on my Twitter. Turns out my IFTTT connections were firing two different recipes.

I linked my Wordpress to my FB Page, and told it if I had a post tagged with "Image", to upload the image to the page (which would also add the post to the image description). If I had a post tagged with "NoImage", to post a status message instead.

Turns out IFTTT put my blog entry as a status message AND uploaded the image, which fired two FB Pages recipes. One for tweeting a status message, and one for tweeting an image.

So instead, I've just set my Wordpress connection to only ever put a FB Pages status message, and stopped using the Image/NoImage tags.

During your career as a cosplayer, kig, furry or anthro kig, you are bound to get some criticism about any part of your character and/or costume. Here's a few of my thoughts on handling them.

Some of those criticisms maybe public, like on your social media feed

Others might be semi-private, like over a messenger or group chat

Others might be private, like direct messages or emails.

Some of these criticisms may be constructive, others may not be.

When getting criticism, consider first on which side of the fence the criticism is. Are they providing constructive feedback -- saying where something is not quite right, and/or suggesting how to improve it? Comments such as "the ponytail needs to be a bit higher" is GOOD feedback and should be considered as an improvement.

Or, are they providing an opinion which is not constructive feedback, such as "the costume is too short/long" or "that is freaky". These comments should be ignored. Comments by anonymous users should generally be ignored -- they are almost always trolls, anyway.

When considering improvement feedback from constructive criticisms, be aware that you cannot, and should not satisfy every comment. Some of those comments, while they may be valid, may not necessarily be correct for how you envisioned your character to turn out.

Take for example, my Morrigan costume

Is this accurate? Well, yes, and no depending on your perspective of what "accurate" is.

Her gloves are different colours depending on the art. Here's a couple of sample artworks from the internet. Are my gloves the correct colour? Yes and no....

Yesterday during my afternoon walk, I got stopped by a random woman who started preaching "God loves you" at me. No idea why, but went on for a few minutes before I left (it was starting to rain)

This morning, I found this in my RSS reader.

[cheezburger.com/12374021/...](https://cheezburger.com/12374021/evangelists-get-out-religioned-by-dad)

Definitely worth a read.

Full costume in action

After multiple years and several iterations, I think I'm satisfied with this look. The wings are a pain to put on and I'm constantly banging them into things, and the tights I need to remember to smooth out after putting them on. Apart fro that, I think the look is good enough to be happy with.

Gaaaah, my zentai zipper seems to be playing up and splitting. Looks like I'll probably need to look at buying a new one (or a backup one at least).

Going to look at trying out Ayame's one. They have a color matching service so I might be able to color match to my Azami.

Sooooo.... seems like the guy who smashed up my car because he was drunk is now resisting the costs by my insurance. My old insurance company has asked me to complete a litigation questionnaire so there's the potential this goes to court....

Selene hasn't had much screen time, so here's a video

Adding on my blog for the benefit of those who may not see this on my other postings.

I saw this clip on Sky News earlier and the beginning looks like every other wedding photoshoot -- professionally done, and peaceful, then BOOM everything shakes and you see the cameraman running to the side of the building for protection. And when you see the scale of the explosion, and how "atom bomb"-like it is, it's understandable why the bride thought she was going to die.

The hire car company contacted me, they advised they have now submitted my costs to the third party insurance company (the insurance company of the guy who hit me.)

I had the car for about 2 months, 60 days. Hire rate is £75 per day. So that is £4.5K (US$5.5) for the hire car -- more than the £3K (US$3.7K) my old car was valued at when it was written off.....

Total cost in the insurance:

• £3000 -- written off car
• £2500 -- written off car
• £1500 -- written off car
• £4500 -- hire car
• ??? -- repair cost for one car
• ??? -- repair/write-off for driver's own car

So £11,500 at least, not including the driver's own repair/writeoff costs and not including the repair of the one car that survived the accident.

That beer nearly cost him £12K (nearly US$15K)....

We're into the 30s (degC) again here....

Feeling better after being able to rest for the Saturday. A throbbing headache but not as bad as before.

Got an early start on Monday. So will have to make sure I hit the sack early tonight.

Been throwing up most of yesterday evening and throughout the night.

Whatever I ate, my insides are not thanking me for it...

My hire car got picked up today. I can finally close off this incident.

At least I hope I can. No doubt I'll be getting phone calls, emails, texts asking "I hear you've been in an accident....."

MTG Arena has ceased to be fun (again) so I've dropped it (again) and returned to playing Planet Zoo and I also picked up Dragon Age Origins.

It's online functionality broken as hell due to its age and EA, presumably. But I definitely like the story.

Looks like I still have a few habits I need to break on the new car.

The Yaris is a push-button start engine. No need to turn a key in the ignition. However, I'm still used to turning the key in the ignition when stopping the car and have found myself grasping at nothing under the steering wheel when stopping the car.

I had a tendency to push my manual car into neutral when stationary. I'm still doing that in this car. pushing the gear from D to N.

The car has LDA (Lane Departure Assist) and RSA (Road Sign Assist). RSA detects and recognises speed limit signs. The car then also alerts you if you go beyond the speed limit by 1, 2 or 5 mph. I configured it for 5 mph over. So if the speed limit is 30mph, it will alert you when you hit or go above 35mph. However, the audio alerts were annoying when you have to accelerate to overtake other vehicles. So I turned off the audio alert, but left the visual alerts on.

LDA was useful, but when you're driving locally and you have idiots parking on the road, such that you have to cross the centre road line to go around them, the LDA will detect that and alert you. So I turned that off.

Finally, the collision detection alarm triggered on me this morning. As I was driving towards the shops another car cut in on my lane, and the alarm fired. The entire info display turned red, the beeper beeped me insistently, with the word "BRAKE!" flashing in red and black. I was already on the way to hitting the brake and had just turned out of a junction, so I wasn't even going that fast. But at least I know that part of the system works properly.

Picked up my new car. And Toyota gave me a plushie for free. A cute little robot too.