so apparently calibre will automatically adopt the windows color scheme, and if you have an epub that doesn't define a background color, only a foreground color, you might end up with a slightly less than readable book

(weird things people say to you when you come out with a new name:
"hey my girlfriend wrote an erotic BDSM story about a girl with that name, you should read it")

@foone Yup, I "solved" this years ago with a bunch of CSS overrides.

@foone *blinks*

@foone Calibre is my favorite case study in engineer-designed UX

@foone

@kirtai knowing her girlfriend, I'm very right to be scared

@foone I know this isn't the point but the fuck kind of tumblers is there that fit a god damn baseball in them?

@somekindofgarf this was written by a brit, I don't think she knows what size baseballs are

BTW it's #000000 vs #121212.

@foone oh look, it's the cutest alice

@foone ah yes two of my favourite colours: black and almost black.

@freya I don't think they make non-cute alices

@foone that's true but that one is like the maximally cute kissable alice

@freya but who could it be?

@foone youuuuu

@foone you are the most kissable cuddlable adorable pretty alice

@freya waow!

@foone extremely pretty lovely girl who I very much desire to kisss lots

@freya awwawawa thanks cutie 😊

@foone i thought it failed to load

@SRAZKVT that's exactly what I thought when I tried to open the book!

@foone Reminds me of copy protection challenge/response sheets included in boxed PC games in the early 90s.

@CDubbs yeah, I definitely couldn't steal this story on an old copier

@foone there is a relatively popular HDG story whose protagonist is named Alice.

As a fellow Alice, it needed to share that knowledge.

@foone perfection

@Seiryn oh, which one is that? I've only read a few HDG stories but I loved the ones I did

@foone how many incredibly clever Wonderland references have you heard already

I had a friend named Dorothy. The sheer number of people who somehow thought she would be amused by the six billionth Wizard of Oz reference was staggering.

@gloriouscow surprisingly few!

also Dorothy was a runner up until I learned that people shorten it to "dot" and I don't mess with that shit

@gloriouscow also I forgot to say this:

hehe you're a friend of dorothy

@foone @gloriouscow but Graphviz!

@petrillic @gloriouscow I always have trouble when I try to use graphviz so I'm not gonna consider that a positive

@gloriouscow @foone having been one of three Andrews in a den of nine cub scouts, I completely understand the frustration with namespace collisions even if people aren't cracking annoying jokes.

When we were picking names for my daughter befor she was born we were aiming for like top 1k so people would know how to spell it, but *not* top 25 or so, to avoid colliding with other kids her age.

If she ever wants to become a guy or just doesn't like what we called her she's welcome to change it, but if I did my job well it won't be because she's tired of being one of a dozen kids in her friend group with the same name.

Alice seems to be around that sweet spot too, I don't know very many others.

@foone ironically this was a problem for her

@gloriouscow ahh I know those feelings.

@foone since you like keyboards a lot can we call you Alice A Keys

@gloriouscow Sure

@foone @gloriouscow Okay, in this circle, I'd expect more people wanting you to chat with their friend Bob.

@hakfoo @gloriouscow I know, right? I'm just waiting for some Bob to chat me up, but so far it hasn't happened

@azonenberg @gloriouscow @foone pre-transition I had an annoyingly common name, but hadn't known an Emily since high school, so I thought I was safe, it didn't *seem* that common

I have since met like six Emilies

@emily @azonenberg @foone

Its the the roving packs of Emilies you have to watch out for

@gloriouscow @emily @azonenberg my roommate is dating one!

@emily @azonenberg @gloriouscow How many of them were trans, though?
Because there's certain names that just appeal to trans women for some reason, like I've known so many Evelyns, Lex(i)s, Lillies, Maddies, & Sarahs (one of my runner-ups) that picked the name themselves, and very few that were born with it.

@foone @gloriouscow @azonenberg dating a whole roving pack of Emilies sounds terribly confusing tbh

@emily @gloriouscow @azonenberg yes. At one point my roommate was dating three transfem enbies named Kit.

@foone @emily @azonenberg were they sharing a trenchcoat

@gloriouscow @emily @azonenberg I don't think at any time were they all in the same city, but I'm sure if they had gotten together, some kind of trenchcoat would have been involved

@foone @azonenberg @gloriouscow outside of fedi, just me

on fedi, most of them I think, but that's kind of just a fedi thing

@foone @azonenberg @gloriouscow of these, I think Lily is the only one I considered for any length of time, but it was a very short length of time because one of my partner's cats was named Lily and that seemed like it would be Weird

@emily @azonenberg @gloriouscow oh yeah I get that. I basically went through a ton of names and took out any that were used by friends and families (and pets)

A lot of good names sadly got pruned at that stage, since I didn't want to have name collisions

@foone @emily @gloriouscow @azonenberg we looked up the demographics of our name before choosing it. it was most popular in the 1920s (there was a song...)

@ireneista @emily @gloriouscow @azonenberg same! I went though the year of my birth and then a couple dozen years in each direction, going through most common girl names.

I think one of my roommate might have done the 1920s-demographics thing, she's named "Edith", and isn't as 80 years old as you'd think from that name.

Irene is a great name though, btw.

@foone @azonenberg @gloriouscow I also had to prune Kate, because a friend (who shared my deadname) transitioned before I did and took that name

she later told me that she would've found it really funny if I'd intentionally name-conflicted with her again

@emily @azonenberg @gloriouscow hahaha. Evil! That would have been hilarious, yeah

@emily @foone @azonenberg @gloriouscow

Oh heavens. Lots of Ems, Emilies, and Emmas;
Tons of Jens, Jennies, Jennifers, Gwens count too if you're talking etymology;
Alices, of course, especially among the hacker girls;
Sarahs and Saras and all the like (though for this one I partially blame Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie);
Lily and Rose and a couple of Daisies, flower names are a big one (and Ginger while we're at it);
Lunas are all over the place;
And at least one Kayla of whom I know, who is an artist of some popularity...

"Wait, there are three Zoes?"
"Close. She's kitty Zoe, she's bunny Zoe, and I'm Zoey with a Y."
(Or words to that effect, courtesy of, ah, Zoe Storm.)

@theogrin @emily @azonenberg @gloriouscow oh god how did I forget the Lunas. Yeah, they're all over the place.

Bunch of Aprils too.

@foone @theogrin @azonenberg @gloriouscow well actually the correct plural form is Lunata

@emily @theogrin @azonenberg @gloriouscow lunipodes

@emily @foone @azonenberg @gloriouscow

Oh yeah, Aprils, and also the occasional May and June.

Haven't met too many Augusts though. And ah, here I'd thought it might have been Lunae. The more you know!

@theogrin @emily @azonenberg @gloriouscow lunae would be the plural if we were speaking latin right now.

Latine nunc non loquimur.

@foone @theogrin @emily @azonenberg are there stereotypical enby names? Because I'm trying to decide between Pawbert or Rufio

@gloriouscow @theogrin @emily @azonenberg random nouns. the go-to joke name I always see is "leaf".

either that or some silly made up name where you just smash the keyboard until someone vaguely pronouncable comes out on accident, like "zarbi" or "foone"

@foone @ireneista i have a theory that most trans women tend to pick either a popular baby name 'now' (Luna, Lily, Emma), a popular baby name from when they were born (Jess, Emily), or popular when their grandparents were born ('grandma names' like Irene/Irina or Edith).

seems it's pretty rare that someone picks a name that was popular in their parents generation - but i don't exactly have data to back that up

@irina @ireneista yeah.
Although I have heard anecdotally of people going, like, "mom, what would you have named me if I had been born a girl/boy?" and using that.

@foone @irina @ireneista

I had a weird variant of that: when I finally settled on the name Jennifer and told my mom, she was like, "If you had been born a girl..."

In a more fanciful world I might imagine that my soul heard it in the womb and seized upon it.

@foone wait wait wait wait wait, is it the HDG one?

@freya No, it's the above unreadable Ashley Finch story

@foone oh! I wondered if it was the HDG thing with a very cuet Alice. Not as cute as you, mind

@foone I'm curious what this story is and whether I can read it

@freya I believe you have to be a patron of hers to read it, and it's titled "Pet Sitter"

@foone that is a fucking delightful title, I'm here for it. link to the patreon, love, if you don't mind?

@freya I'll have to check out this story then!

thanks, kitty! *meow*

@freya here you go:

https://www.patreon.com/c/ashleyfinch/posts

@foone awwawawaawawawawawawawaaedszlgjdfjhgfdlgfdshgfhjngf

@foone beeeeeeep

@foone thank you prettiest one!

@foone https://archiveofourown.org/works/49969393/chapters/126164026

@freya so fun fact: the keysmash-detection code I'm working on (to quantify flustering transfems) is probably going to have a problem with that message which will make it an excellent test case!
(the awawa detector and the keysmash detector are going to both fire, which I've not yet implemented code for)

@foone !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! babe! baaaabe of course you haveg a keysmash detector omg you are perfect. you are perfect in every single possible way

@Seiryn A promising list of tags, I'll have to read that.

right now it's way too 11pm to start a 100k word story, I know how easily that can turn into "WHY DID I STAY UP UNTIL 4AM TO FINISH IT?"

@freya well I don't have one YET, but I'm working on it.

@foone gods, I am going to kiss you so much. you are so pretty and smart and hot and cute and an extremely good girl <!-- retracted if you don't like being called that --> and awawawawawawaa

@freya up until this week I wasn't happy with being called "girl" but this week has been very complicated on the identity front, so I'm more than happy to be a good girl ^_^

@foone you are a *very* good girl, it's incredible, I've been following you on fedi for ages now and then suddenly, DING! you're on my TRANSceiver and I'm wanting to kiss you and omg I have a dedicated detector for silly cute hot transfems

@foone time to keep you and take you home I think. yep. that's what I do to good girls

@freya I don't have such a detector, but as mentioned above I'm working on building one ^_^

@freya this keeps happening: cute trans girls want to take me home and I'm like "that sounds fun!" and they live on the opposite side of the planet :(

@foone you have very strong pet vibes. kind of small girl who would curl up in front of my stack of servers

@foone mine's built-in, and it detects not just keysmashes, but lonely girls, or girls in need of many kisses, or girls newly out and in need of validation of what pretty girls they are

@freya right now I feel very much like the pet who everyone just got introduced to, and they all went "cute!" and started petting.

Definitely enjoying that so far, so I guess you're right, I'm pet

@foone you look like you'd be shorter than my stack of servers actually

@freya possibly! the doc said I was 5'9"/175cm on monday, which is both shorter than I thought I was, and taller than I'd like to be.

@foone ah no, not that body, the pet body that your vibe projects. also we're the same height! perfect for kissing

@foone wanna see the servers cutie?

@wouter @foone @emily @azonenberg

I can honestly say I have never met a Wouter before in my life

...what did you do to all of the other Wouters

@freya oh yes I see. yes I am often spiritually curled up in front of the computerboxes

@freya and great: efficient kissing!

@freya yes.
but which base is that?

@foone computerboxes for the most pretty Alice to curl up in front of

@foone base 0x0f I think, cutie

@freya very nifty! And hey, Dell-EMC: I used to work at Pure Storage, and we were always consideing EMC our Main Rival

Yep, definitely needs a little foonecat in front of that warm-looking stack

@freya ahh, I see you are also acquainted with the deadly Hex Baseball

@foone ah, but of course!

@foone 85TB of ZFS Solaris-based storage for a very, very good kitty to curl up in front of

@foone 4 Dell servers, two Sun boxes, and some other random shit

@foone two mac minis, one G4, one M1

@freya is it even a home rack if there isn't some random shit in there?

@foone not even fucking remotely

@foone oh there's a 64-bit MIPS box running a BSD in there

@freya are you secretly gewt? it'd explain a lot

@foone I am not, cuteling

@foone I do not have many architectures, only ARM, MIPS, SPARC, PPC and X64. I am missing PA-RISC, IBM POWER8+, Alpha, IA64...

@foone what I am is secretly (in fact not at all secretly) gay for you, cute little kitten

@freya yay
it's always good when cute girls are gay for me
we can be gay buddies ^_^

@foone yes yes yes yes yes

@foone this is what I fucking love doing, finding the newly out girlthings and just...... being like "hi welcome to the club, we have SPARC workstations, soft blankets, girl kisses, and love"

@freya yeah that's one of the best things about being out!

@foone I'm so fucking proud of you, kitten

@foone ngl I kinda knew you were transfem before now, or like, enby transfem? you had the vibe, reeeeeeal hard, but now you're broadcasting it

@foone @irina @ireneista funny enough, I knew for years what my "cis girl name" would have been, and found it utterly bland.

Stole my name from a former classmate instead – chances of running into her again are slim as hell; last I heard she'd moved elsewhere – because I'd found it fascinating ever since I'd first heard it.

If you see someone shoplifting names, no you didn't!

@foone I’ve been running into this problem since (at least) whatever web browser I was using in the 90s allowed had a UI to change the default background and foreground colours.

The lesson clearly still hasn’t been learned.

Not sure if it needs to be learned by document authors who shouldn’t assume white backgrounds or viewer developers who should put some contrast heuristics in.

Probably both.

@foone@digipres.club i was a bit confused who this is at first, so the number of alices is steadily increasing, that’s good

@alice yep. all the alices I've met are awesome and cute so more must be better

@whelmed yay! *is petted*

@foone @whelmed is so pettable and such a very very very good and beautiful and pretty girl

@freya oh yeah. I'd been out as non-binary since, like, 2016ish? then transfem enby since 2021.

gender is complicated lets go shopping

@foone yoooo let's

@foone let's go buy new genders at the RePC. or make out up against the big stack of Dell serversa

@freya first one, then the other?

@foone yes yes yes yes yes

@foone gods fuck I miss Seattle

@foone I miss living in a city where there are more than three transfems.

@freya yeah I grew up in a tiny town in north carolina, I know the feeling.
like even after I'd moved to the bigger university town, the trans population was like three people all of who went to the same coffee shop

@foone oh gods, which one, if you don't mind saying? I know that fucking area

@freya Grew up in Hendersonville, moved to Asheville for college and then work

@foone oh good gods yeah no I know the area, fuck that fuck that fuck that fuck that

@freya @foone as a Seattle resident, I’m pretty sure I have seen that occur at least once :P

@GroupNebula563 @foone you may have literally seen me do this in 2023\

@freya @foone it is entirely possible :P

@freya @foone “what if we drove down to the tukwila location and made out at The Ink Stop(tm)”
-a sentence that has probably been uttered at least once, knowing fedi

@GroupNebula563 @foone I prefer the Seattle one myself, that's where I lived near to

@freya @foone me too :P

it’s a bit more chaotic /pos

@GroupNebula563 @foone hey I got a Dell R710 running Solaris for $100 oso. can't complain

@freya @foone my one gripe is they don’t have a “random bullshit someone probably found in a dumpster and also a bin full of 70 vacuum tubes for some reason” section like the (ex-)tukwila one does

@GroupNebula563 @foone no though they do have some massively old scanner radios in the back

@freya @foone they’ve actually moved those to the front IIRC, there’s a section of the “random shit” table near the entrance dedicated to older stuff

also, the trademark “‘THIS WALL’” sign is still there (and in fact has been amended with “aka ‘THAT WALL’”)

@GroupNebula563 @foone gods, I fucking miss Seattle so bad

@freya @foone why’d it leave anyways? (should I use 3pp? just being safe since most dolls/bots/etc want that :P)

@GroupNebula563 @foone eheeh, any form of address works, beep!

this one had to leave because its marriage exploded so its attempts to move to the US exploded

@freya @GroupNebula563
aww. Always a shame when that happens.

@GroupNebula563 @foone omg omg omg yes. I know that lopcation really well

@freya @foone they actually moved it to Kent recently :P

AFAIK it’s all the same collection and signage and such, just in a different building

@GroupNebula563 @freya I haven't been up there since the move, I need to visit sometime.

maybe if I have a job by then I'll have the cash to go to VCF:PNW and I can stop by while I'm there

@foone
The Zarbi were a ~monster in classic Doctor Who... Maybe that name was generated by keyboard smashing.
@gloriouscow @theogrin @emily @azonenberg

@foone@digipres.club @freya@chaosfem.tw this is the fucking nerdiest thing ever and I really really really want to see the code (and/or write it lol)

@whelmed @freya It'll get put up on github once it's more functional (I keep getting distracted by flirting with transfems to generate more keysmashes) , I'll tag you when it goes up

@foone @whelmed what a gooood girl

@freya@chaosfem.tw @foone@digipres.club asdgfkhflhlfjlfklahkgajgskjldjpagjgsjgkshkyfkh!!!! hey- you- mhmfjhfdhgd

@whelmed @freya hey guess what you're gonna be in the corpus when I release it