Poll #1492893 mogupic
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 42

Describe (briefly) what you see in the above picture. Post a comment if you need to be more verbose.

Do you consider that picture Safe For Work?

Why is that picture there?

I recently introduced Allison to Orgazmo; and I don't want to sound like a queer or nothing, but that movie is still hilarious.

Why hasn't Allah Sulu made any polls recently?

If you're interested in how I created the desktop animation for our Cincinnati preshow ACMRH The Musical, and you'd like the instructions and tools for doing the same thing on your own, see this post I wrote in my as_massive_tool community.

It's been a while since our cast (whose name and composition has varied over the years, but is currently the Transylvanian Concubines of Fairfax, VA) has done a preshow at a convention, due to time constraints, lack of motivation, or simply not enough cast members in attendance. Q and I only attended the Saturday afternoon portion of the last convention (Atlantic City, 2008) at the last minute; and, if I recall correctly, the two of us were the only members of our cast to attend the Chicago convention in 2006 (and so on, and so on). We decided that we wanted to do something new and different; it wasn't simply enough to do one of our preshows that hadn't been seen on the national level yet (although we do want to show off our First Nudie Preshow sometime), we wanted to create something brand new for the occasion.

Q had the idea of making a musical (I thought we should have called it a "rock opera") about the old Rocky Horror newsgroup on usenet (alt.cult-movies.rocky-horror). We brainstormed on topics – I insisted that one of the songs had to be "The Next Rocky Horror", about Repo!, Showgirls, et al., for instance – and then Q wrote most of the songs with her band Glasgow Tunnel (Tim and Katy) with additional lyrics and vocals by Σοφωκλεσ and Skanky. (I offered some additional input, which was occasionally even used; but only played a minor part in the audio production since I can't sing or play an instrument.)

Once the music was finished, recorded, mixed, and edited, it was my turn to get serious. I produced the list of all off-topic obituaries ever posted to the newgroup (one of the many issues that rent the group) which Q assembled (from Google image searches) in chronological order; she also assembled the other montages. (We made a long list of movies that qualified as "the next Rocky Horror", but couldn't fit all of them. Many, like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, got left out; but I insisted that Batman had to stay. The convention montage was made entirely from pictures I took at previous conventions.) I created all of the animations for the computer startup sequence, the desktop, and all of the fake inside-joke newsgroup posts. My utility, Allah Sulu's Massive Tool, played a large part in the animation process (and was plugged in the animation).

We rehearsed it a bit at home in Maryland, and in our room at the convention; but some of the performance still consisted of on-the-spot ad libs (like my decision to stick balloons in my shirt so that I'd have huge fake boobs for the verse about Showgirls. I spend about fifteen minutes combing the floor of the convention hall looking for two balloons that were the same size and shape. Cosmo wondered what the hell I was doing, but I didn't explain.) Since the whole thing was so inside-jokey, we expected it to go over many peoples' heads, and only appeal to the old timers – we were all pleasantly shocked by how well it was received. Flush with success, Q wants to write a real, full-length musical now.

( YouTube Videos! )

( Pictures and Captions! )

EDIT: Both Tom Baker (Doctor #4) and Sylvester McCoy (Doctor #7) thought that Eddie Izzard should be Doctor Who.

I just took a quick look through my spam folder before emptying it. (This is something I do occasionally, but not all the time.) I found a letter in there from someone that I know (she was at my recent surprise birthday party, in fact) who was asking me about my Massive Tool. I wonder how many other letters have ended up in my spam folder because Google Mail thought that the phrase "your Massive Tool" meant that they were penis enlargement ads?

I finally got around to adding five more images to my personal mood theme that I've had in the works for a while. Next, I'm putting one together for Q.

Yep, way too much time on my hands today, in case you hadn't already noticed all of the other stuff I've accomplished…

This trailer shows quite a few bits that we haven't seen in the previous trailer; in particular, it shows us a few more plot/character bits and less random explosions than the American trailer. Also ganked from yendi (who got it from robyn_ma) is this page of the Watchmen characters re-imagined as female manga characters (with translation by Google here). The icons I'm using for yendi and robyn_ma come from my collection of Watchmen icons for the Massive Tool.

I finally got around to uploading the first page I made for my son Richard with my Drag Show program. It's Richard in the world of Blue's Clues. Note that all of the characters, including Richard, can be freely dragged around the screen and placed at will. (Right-click HERE to download the tranny¹ file to use in Drag Show.) Q also points out that anyone using this or similar Drag Show screens in their browser can simply use the Print Screen button to save the results if they so desire. Originally Richard was the "highest" element, in that he was always on top when two images overlapped, but I switched it around so that he could be behind the other, smaller characters. (The order in which the dragme elements are defined determines which ones are on top of the others – the ones defined first are always "below" the ones defined later.) I have some ideas for tweaks and expansions to the Drag Show program; when a new version is available, I'll announce it in the as_massive_tool community. (Richard has already had fun playing with his avatar in the Blue's Clues world; and for my next trick, I'll be using this GIF to place Richard on the tracks with Thomas and the other trains on the Island of Sodor…)

¹That's short for "transitional data".

EDIT: Crossposted to Allah Sulu's Massive Tool.

Check out this page that I threw together, as an example of one of the things I'm currently playing with. It's kind of like those Colorforms™ we used to play with as kids, where you can place people and things wherever you want over a large background. (That's right, you can move the Vodka God and his miniature bottles of Absolut wherever you want to put them.) Unfortunately, for now, the word bubbles only work properly under Internet Explorer and not Firefox, but I'm still playing with that. For my next trick, I plan to make a couple of pages like this for Richard, combining his favorite characters/shows with pictures of himself and his family and friends. See where he places himself on the Island of Sodor, or if he can have Blue actually help his father find a clue. (Boy, won't that take imagination on his part!)

For more information on how I did this, and how you can do it too, check out this entry that I just posted to as_massive_tool.

I mentioned my Massive Tool to one of my friends recently, and she had no idea what I was talking about. I found that odd, because I thought I talked about my Massive Tool all the time… but then I realized that I haven't really said much about it here in my LJ since I made the as_massive_tool community for information and updates on the topic. So, I figured I'd whip out my Massive Tool for all of you relatively recent befriendings who are just confused or amused by the phrase "Allah Sulu's Massive Tool" as she was.

My Massive Tool is something that I've been playing with for some time now. (Look, I'm sorry, but with a name like that the innuendoes are inevitable!) It's a program I've written, and periodically update, which runs under Microsoft Windows; a bizarre Text/HTML editor on steroids with built-in LiveJournal client functions (and limited applicability for LJ-compatible sites as well). I write almost all of my LiveJournal posts in the Massive Tool, and it generates the various HTML effects I like to employ but am too lazy to type in manually… things like the customized LJ user tags I use, for instance: allah_sulu. I also use it for various text/font effects, lists and tables, and so forth. It even has a fairly powerful scripting language built in that I get a lot of use out of – I'm not kidding when I say that this program is seriously overpowered for a Text/HTML editor. Any time I want to do something, if the capability doesn't already exist in the Massive Tool, I add it – either by modifying the program code itself, or by writing another macro. If any of you are curious, it's a free download; and the as_massive_tool community is there for questions and requests.

I've made several hundred of those little replacement user icons (and am continually making more). They can be seen on the Massive Tool Reference Pages; a site which will also generate custom user tag HTML for you without requiring you to download an executable (and will work with any browser/OS, not just Windows). The custom user tag HTML generated there can be used for LiveJournal, DeadJournal, GreatestJournal, and InsaneJournal users and communities. And, if you want a user icon for a specific character and it doesn't already exist, I do take requests … or you can use my Icon Maker site to create your own!

So there you go. Want to make your own sparkly LJ user tags? Now you know how.

As I said to LarryV earlier, I'm in no hurry to download and install yet another browser on my machine. Sure, there's a lot of hype about Google's Chrome, but there's hyperbolic hype about everything Google does. I figured I'll wait for the bugs to get found and worked out. Sure enough, some have already materialized. Remember that browser carpet-bombing exploit vulnerability in Apple's Safari browser earlier this year, that they had to release a patch for? Chrome uses the same Webkit engine that Safari uses; and even though this was a known (and highly publicized) security hole, Google didn't bother patching it in Chrome. So yeah, if you got Chrome, enjoy it; I hear it's really fast. But like any other major software launch, I'll wait until it has a service pack or two under its belt.

EDIT: That being said, if any of you notice any oddities in the way Chrome handles HTML/CSS on LJ, especially the code generated by my Massive Tool, please let me know. I'll assume that it renders things more-or-less the way that Safari does until informed otherwise.