#I hope this works I haven't uploaded a gif to Tumblr in like so many years | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

astercontrol · 2 months

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If KOSA passes

Or if any other form of censorship (there are many in the works!) ever succeeds at stepping in to impede our ability to communicate online:

We have to make plans.

Now, I dunno who'll even see this post. The few followers I have are TRON fans (who despite the fantasy we live in, tend to have realistically dismal views IRL about Disney and the various corporate uses of software).

And this fandom, on average, is pretty tech-savvy. It's where I've encountered the most people under 20 years old who actually know how to use a desktop or laptop computer.

So, if there's any hope for what I'm thinking about, this is prolly a good place to start with it.

(As with all my posts, I encourage reblogging and containment-breaching.)

(Gifs are clips from TRON 1982, mainly the "deleted love scene," from the DVD extras.)

Anyway.

Current society has moved online communication much too far onto major social media sites for my comfort. Whoever you communicate with over the internet, chances are you do it through a service owned by a big company: Tumblr, Twitter, Discord, Telegram, Facebook, whatever. Even TikTok (shudder).

These sites, despite their many flaws, can provide experiences that are valuable and hard to get otherwise. And once all your friends are on one site, you can't just leave and stay in touch with them all, not unless they all go the same place. It's easy to see why it's hard to abandon any social media platform.

But a backup plan is important. Because, as we've seen over and over, social media sites can't be relied on. They change their policies suddenly, without good reason-- and are inconsistent, even discriminatory, about enforcing those policies.

If they're funded by ads, the advertisers are their main customers, and your posts are the product. Their goal is that the posts most valuable to the advertisers get seen by people the advertisers consider desirable customers.

Helping you communicate-- making your posts get seen by the people you want to communicate with-- is optional to them.

Not to mention that the whole business model of an ad-funded website is generally unsustainable. Many of these sites are operating at a loss, relying on shareholders in a fragile bubble, doomed to fail soon just from lack of real profit.

And the more restrictions --like KOSA-- that the law puts on freedom of online speech, the likelier they are to go down or just become unusable. Every rule a site is required to follow is another strain on its resources, and most of them are already failing badly at even enforcing their own self-imposed rules.

If we want any control over our continued ability to stay in touch with our online friends-- we need to have a backup plan. Maybe it'll be simple at first, a bare-bones system we cobble together-- but it's gotta be something that will work. For a while at least.

There are lots of really good posts about ways to build your own website, using a service like Neocities. I VERY MUCH recommend learning this skill-- learning to make websites of the very simplest, most stable, glitch-resistant type, made of html pages-- which you can upload to a host while you store backups on your home computer. If you value the writing and art that you put online, this is probably the safest you can keep it.

But that's for making your own creative work public.

As for communicating with others-- for example, receiving and answering other people's comments on your work-- that gets more complex. I personally haven't found it worthwhile to troubleshoot the problems that come with having a system that allows visitors to comment publicly on my website.

But what we do still have-- and likely will for a long time-- is email.

Those of us who came of age before social media's current hold... well, we might take this for granted. Email was the first form of online contact we ever encountered… and thus it can seem to us like the most ordinary, the most boring.

But in the current world, it is a rare and precious thing to find a method of communicating that doesn't require everyone in the chat to be signed on with the same corporation.

Email is, as of now, still perfectly legal-- as much as social media companies have been trying to herd the populace away from it. I'm sure there are other ways to share thoughts online that are not bound by laws. But I am not going to go into that here.

Email service is provided by law-abiding companies, which will comply with subpoenas if law enforcement thinks you are emailing about doing illegal things. So, email is not a surefire way to be safe, if laws become dystopian enough to threaten your freedom to talk about your own life and identity.

But it's safer than posting on a public social media page.

For now.

Email is beautifully decentralized. You can get an email address many different ways-- some reliant on a company like Gmail, others hosted on your own domain. And different people, with all different types of email addresses, hosted in all different ways-- can all communicate together by the same method.

Of course any of these people, individually, can lose their email address for some reason or other, and have to get a new one. But as long as they still know the email addresses of their contacts, they can reconnect and recover from that loss. The structure of a group linked by email is reliant not on a single company-- but on the group itself, the friends you can actually count on.

This is why I am trying to promote the idea of forming email lists, as a backup plan to give people a way to stay in touch as mainstream social media sites prove to be unsustainable.

I'm envisioning a simple system of sending emails to several addresses at once, and making each reply visible to everyone in the chat by using "reply all" (or, if desired, editing the To field to reply to only some).

If enough people get used to using email in this way, it could fill most of the needs met by any other group chat or forum …without depending on a centralized social media company that's taking dystopian measures to try and make the business profitable.

So here are some thoughts about how I personally imagine it could work.

(Feel free to comment and bring up any thoughts I haven't addressed, or suggestions to customize how specific groups could set it up. This is meant as more of a starting point for brainstorming than a catch-all solution.)

As I see it, here are the basics of what you and your friends would each need to start out:

An email address. Any kind, hosted anywhere. You should use a dedicated email account just for this group, one that you do NOT use for other communication. Being in this group will result in things you don't want happening to your main email address-- like getting a TON of email, one for every post and reply. Or someone could get your email address that you really don't want any contact with. Use a burner email account (one that you can easily replace) and change it if needed.

The knowledge of how to "REPLY ALL" in your email. This will be necessary in order to add a comment that everyone in the group can see.

The knowledge of how to EDIT THE "TO" FIELD in your email, and remove addresses from the list of all recipients. This will be necessary if you want to CHANGE WHICH PEOPLE in the group can see your comment.

The knowledge of how to FILTER WORDS in your email. This will be necessary if a topic comes up that you don't want to see any mentions of.

The knowledge of how to BLOCK PEOPLE in your email. This will be very important. If someone joins this email group who you do not want to interact with, it will be up to you to BLOCK them so that you do NOT see their messages. (If they are bad enough to evade the block with multiple burner accounts, that's what you have a burner account for. Change it, and share the new one only with those you trust not to give it to them.)

Every person in the group will be effectively a "moderator" of the group, able to remove people from it by cutting their email addresses out of the "To" field. Members will all have equal "moderator" privileges, each able to tailor the group to their own needs.

This means the group may naturally split, over time, into other groups, each one removing some people and adding others. Some will overlap, some won't. This is good! This is, in my opinion, what online interaction SHOULD be like! There should be MANY groups like this!

In this way, we can keep online discussion alive, no matter WHAT happens to any of the social media websites.

If the dystopia got bad enough to shut down email, we could even continue with postal mail and photocopies, like they did in the days of print-zine fanfiction.

If it looks like the dystopia is gonna come for postal mail too, we'll use the connection we have to preserve whatever contacts we can with people who live near us.

Not saying it's GONNA get that bad. But these steps of preparation are good no matter exactly what kind of bad stuff happens.

As long as some organized form of communication still exists, we'll have a place where it's at least a little safer to be your true self…

to plan events and meetups…

and maybe even activities a little too risque to make the final cut of a 1982 Disney movie.

They're trying to censor us. We want a Free System. So we're gonna fight back.

For the Users. Not the corporations.

Peace out, programs. <3

#tron #tronblr #tron 1982 #userworldproblems #diy punk #censorship #kosa #internet literacy #email #solutions

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springbloggy · 7 months

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A lot of people ask why there isn't anyone installing tumblr themes anymore, besides mobile users here's my hurdles on trying to find tumblr themes that should shed light to hopefully inspire theme creators and those who want themes back. I don't mean this post to be discouraging...just something I found.

Most theme hunting blogs (such as theme hunters,code-hunters,etc.) have slow uploads or are dead outright. When I was theming way back when, these blogs had more active uploads, but now theyre kinda slow. You could count this with there not being many themes in general anymore, however I scroll through the tumblr theme tags and there's still a lot of themes that simply haven't been reblogged by these blogs. They stick in the tags where it may be harder for some to find them.

There's a lack of "cute" or "creative" themes. While there are some people that make really cool theme designs still, most themes tend to have the same minimalist layouts with similar looks. Long gone are the days where themes could look like this:

While I get the want to make things eligible or responsive, it's still possible to match cute looks with eligible and/or responsive designs.

3. Lack of customization options

One of my favorite theme creators from way back when was Tuktut, Tuktut's themes have fairly standard designs, but they have so many customization options that it didn't matter. For example the sunny theme where Tuktut showcases 11 different photos on how you can customize it, with the potential for much more. Most themes have one or two looks minimum and that's it these days. It's overall blander for customization, looks, and takes away the wants or needs of the blogs.

4. Many dead blogs

There's an uncertainty with tumblr themes because many blogs that did/do create themes tend to jump ship to other blogs or die completely. How would a user know long term that the theme they installed will work long term or get help when the need it when the blog that created the theme dies?

5. Most unique and creative themes are inspired by the looks of other UIs rather than their own creative thing

Most themes that are creative I come across are inspired by UIs (User Interfaces) of other things, such as Windows XP, Macs, Google chrome, etc. Rather than their own creative spin on these ideas or something more unique. While those designs are great, it lessens the creativity of the theme landscape when there's 5 different themes based on Windows 95 but zero based on something more unique like an imaginary OS, imaginary video game, fictional creatures, etc.

6. Strong lack of fandom themes

Back then, there was a lot of fandom themes tied to people's favorite tv series and games. Especially during the SuperWhoLock days. However, now there are no longer themes dedicated to people's favorite blorbo, their blorbo's favorite snack or inspired by fan art of their blorbo eating blorbo's favorite snack while the blorbo browses the internet. If you see a blorbo in a theme it is set dressing at best. It brings less of a personal feel to themes.

These are just my opinions, and these don't apply to every modern theme or creator, but I feel like themes were a lot more interesting back in 2015 then they are today. I hope that my 6 points can provide some inspiration to creators rather than discouragement. I want to see more themes, not less.

#tumblr #tumblr theme #tumblr themes #custom themes #custom theme #196 #196 campfire #springy thoughts

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cyle · 2 years

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for the followers i have who love the technical insides of tumblr...

i've been living on tumblr every day with the gifs-as-mp4 change for over a month now and honestly, i didn't even know that change had been made until i stumbled upon it in an internal changelog about it. it's really that good: we only serve GIFs as MP4 when it makes sense. we do, literally, have many thousands of samples of the conversion process to look at (probably a lot more now). even at tumblr's scale, that's tiny, but the experience feels pretty good with the tuning we've done so far.

more specific examples of where it goes wrong will make it even better, so please send them in.

the really hard part about working on something like tumblr is its scale. we serve millions (tens of millions? hundreds?) of GIFs every single day to the internet at large. think about that: how many things in the world get served tens of millions of times? maybe mcdonalds hamburgers?

the effort of making that thing more performant, smaller, faster, "better", is worth it, to a point. finding that balance point is the really, really hard part. because the money doesn't come from nowhere. we've been serving GIFs as WebP for many years now, with nobody noticing (ok, a few people noticed), to huge benefit. you're already not seeing "real" GIFs!!!!! you didn't even notice!!!!!!

the vast majority of GIFs on tumblr (based on our random sampling) are TV- and film-like stuff, like this:

.... which is almost totally imperceptibly different when served as an H264 MP4 versus a literal GIF. by the way, that example is already actually an WebP image, not a GIF. that change literally saves us a lot of money and CPU time and whatnot trying to serve that as an MP4 instead of a 1987 GIF. in fact, if we let you upload that as an h264 mp4 instead of a GIF, it'd probably look better, since Netflix serves that to you as an h264 mp4 originally.

know your formats! the GIFs you're seeing on tumblr probably started as h264 mp4 files!!!!!!

but there are still tons of tumblr artists who use GIFs to their maximum potential (i follow a few), and i haven't seen any change to how we serve their GIFs. usually they exceed our criteria of when we'd try to serve an mp4, so i see their GIF (or webp) instead. i have some hope that we'll create some kind of Tumblr setting to "prefer GIFs" or something, but still, that'll be for the tiny minority of picky tumblr consumers. audiophiles? more on that thought in a second.

it's interesting, though, how we (Tumblr) introduced "data saving" options, which were universally loved, but basically do this same thing: serve images and videos in formats that are better for your bandwidth and CPU, at the likely cost of quality. there's a very large (silent majority) of Tumblr users who actually want this as a default all the time. they prefer a fast, efficient tumblr, over a perfect fidelity tumblr. i would too if i was living in a place with slow internet, which is a lot of the world today.

i don't blame them; i used to spend a week every year at a house that only had 1mbps internet, and the "data saving" options we've added to tumblr really helped me. i literally could not have used tumblr without it. that's a lot of peoples' experience every day.

there's a debate here about creator versus consumer quality, which is wonderful, that's a lot like what audiophiles and film enthusiasts debate about (i'm an active participant in these debates), but ultimately this gets trumped by an argument about what level of quality is discernably acceptable to the consumer. there's a 0.001% bleeding edge of people who can really know quality, definitely. but can you make decisions for a whole platform based on that? maybe. probably not? how is Tidal doing?

anyway, these are the fun thought exercises of someone like me trying to wrap their heads around how Tumblr can improve for the literal millions of people using it every day.

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sunsestart · 1 year

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I posted 173 times in 2022

That's 173 more posts than 2021!

64 posts created (37%)

109 posts reblogged (63%)

I tagged 155 of my posts in 2022

Only 10% of my posts had no tags

#undertale - 54 posts

#sunsest-art - 41 posts

#reblog - 39 posts

#papyrus - 35 posts

#rottmnt - 24 posts

#art - 23 posts

#sans - 17 posts

#deltarune - 13 posts

#stranger things - 12 posts

#gaster - 10 posts

Longest Tag: 137 characters

#the stranger things fixation has been taking over my life but i still love this au so very much and i plan on continuing it someday :] !!

My Top Posts in 2022:

Click for quality c: !!

Finally finished this thing!! Hehe

This is my entry for @smarties-art dtiys!! Hope u like it

Haven't posted anything around here lately 'cause I was working on this, but I finally finished it + school is almost over, so more art is coming !!

Also, extra thingy:

See the full post

2,932 notes - Posted May 30, 2022

See the full post

3,416 notes - Posted November 2, 2022

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH WUUU! Here's Mettaton

I plan to make a bunch of utdr art for pride month now that I finally have time to draw hehe

He's so fun to draw ahh

4,143 notes - Posted June 2, 2022

Happy Let Papyrus Say Fuck day! again

So, for those that might not know, spanish is my first language so I NEEDED to do this HAHA curse words in spanish sound so intense for no reason hajdhajxh

14,832 notes - Posted June 16, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

YESSSS !! FINALLY !! Let Papyrus Say Fuck dayyyyyy my beloved

26,625 notes - Posted June 16, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

_______

THIS BRINGS BACK SO MANY MEMORIES AHHH

This was my first year ever uploading art and I'm so happy I got sm support !! Thanks everyone

#YAYYYY #my 2022 tumblr year in review

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gojosattoru · 3 years

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Good evening, could you possibly make a gif making process tutorial if you don't mind? I have tried to find tutorials but most of them are sadly outdated and I tried to make a gif going by them but it didn't work out well... I hope I'm not asking too much

Hey dear anon, I'm sorry I'm late with answering but have been a bit busy with some stuff and haven't been feeling well. Thanks for coming to me asking for a gif tutorial, even tho I'm not the best person at making gifs but it made me smile when you asked me. The way I do mine isn't that much of a process, I just do the basis if you want a more accurate and pro at gifing you should ask @yyh @mafuyuh @tanchirou @makiema @vyctornikiforov @invmaki @megumints @rubydragon16 and @hanae-ichihara they are very good at making gifs. So here is what I do:

GIF TUTORIAL!

1. You open Photoshop

2. You go to File option and click on "Import" then "Video Frames to Layers"

3. Then it should open you a window to your folders (these are mine lol don't mind)

4. Then you open the video you want to gif, but attention, the way I do gifs in this option, it only has to be a video file like avi or mp4, mkv doesn't work. For mkv's you need a software for you to make the videos turn into frames, like I said you should ask some of my mutuals, that make gifs through that software and then import to Photoshop).

5. This is what appears when you select the video, now what I usually do is click on the "Select Range Only" and under it, it asks how many frames you want, I normally choose 2 like it's on there, and there's sometimes that I don't click it, I leave as it is. If you select the 2 frames he will decrease the number of frames, the more you choose the less frames will appear so I suggest you choosing only 2 or none.

6. Then, when you want to gif a scene, you need to choose which scene you want, like I have on the picture above, see the red circule? The lil black triangle is what helps you to select the part you wan to gif, when you find the scene and push the lil triangles between the scene you want, you click ok! (Photoshop will ask you something about how big the scene frames are but you click continue nonetheless)

7. So here it is all the frames of the scene I want, now you will only choose the particular part to gif, be careful not choosing too many frames or it will be too heavy and will not upload on tumblr. On the timeline under Dabi you select and then delete the parts you don’t want. You then select the time you want, it’s on each frame, you select all and add the time. Then you click on here:

8. where the red circle is, so that you can make the animation.

9. On the right section, you have all the layer frames, the ones who doesn’t have the little eye, are to be deleted cause they were the ones you deleted earlier on the timeline, so those are to discard, like this:

10. Now you have to select all the layer frames on the right section,click on tight click of the mouse and choose the option “Convert to Smart Object”

11. Then you have your animation done

12. Now to do the frame so that it can be the right size to post in tumblr and to cut the subs lol XD You go to image, and choose the “Canvas Size” and it appear this

13. You go to the height and try to make it shorter on the height size so that you won’t let the subs be seen on the gifs. And you can do on the width too so that the gif frame won’t look too long. Like this, it has 25,4 on height and 45,16 on width, so I will add 22,5 on height and 38 on width and you click on the arrow like I have bellow

14. And with that it cuts a lil on the width and the height and it cuts the subs :D You then go to the Image option and select the “Image Size” you then put 540px on the size. the sizes of tumblr.

15. Now it’s the time we play a bit with colors haha XD I already have a psd so, I just add and play a bit with the colors and see how the quality looks

16. If it looks with some bad quality you just go to “Filter” then choose the option “Blur” and then “Surface Blur”

17. It opens this window and add the same option as I have, it’s sufficient for the bad quality ^^

18. And finally you go to filter again, go to “Sharpen” option and click on “Smart Sharpen” so the gif lines look more sharpen and gives a more quality and see more the details on the gif.

19. Add the same as I have and it’s finished! :)

20. To save you go to File and click on “Save for Web”

Done! ^^ Hope this helps you babe and that I was able to explain well since I’m bad at it lol! Anything you need just ask <3 Thank you again.

#reply #lovely messages #tutorial #gif tutorial #anon #Anonymous #have a nice day/night darling!

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waves-art-blog · 2 years

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I posted 67 times in 2021

26 posts created (39%)

41 posts reblogged (61%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 1.6 posts.

I added 345 tags in 2021

#guild wars 2 - 61 posts

#asura - 53 posts

#gw2 - 47 posts

#reblog - 41 posts

#not my art - 32 posts

#gw2 asura - 29 posts

#waves art - 26 posts

#waterdragonwave art - 25 posts

#<3 - 16 posts

#my art - 15 posts

Longest Tag: 39 characters

#have sometimes some breaks with content

My Top Posts in 2021

Again a Portrait of Alicia.

Perhaps it will saw familiar for one or the other? I made my sketches for the ACEO Cards digitally and I thought: "Why not use the sketches for a few digital exercises? They are already there!” I won't do them all again digitally, but I'll do a few. We'll see which ones.

And sure, the start make Alicia.

See the full post

16 notes • Posted 2021-09-08 00:31:01 GMT

I am just in the mood to draw small pictures to different motives and the like. A few can be found on my main blog "Waves-Art-Blog".

And it was clear that also times an Asura is drawn. Actually, I wanted to take my Nora but after 3 sketches I have Nora now postponed once. So I have taken my Asurasona Wave.

It's just a simple little picture, but it was really fun to paint it. And surely some more pictures will follow. I hope with the time I also learn to make better photos. It doesn't work the way I want it and image post-processing doesn't work that way either. qwq I try my best.

🔹 Program & Material(s): 🔹 Marker Paper, Copic Marker, Color Pencil, Gel pen and Multiliner

See the full post

19 notes • Posted 2021-04-15 00:30:38 GMT

The Lady of the Ruby~

It’s me again! Hello o/

Because so many people are hyping this Magical Girl/Boy outfit and painting pictures of it, I'm also in the mood again to paint something for the Magical Girl/Boy AU of friends and me.

So, here is Alicia in the Magical Girl/Boy AU.

I actually planned this painting as a traditional painting that I wanted to do with Aqaurell. I had painted the sketch digitally in the stream. I have already transferred this picture to watercolour paper, but I decided to paint this picture digitally as well. And here is the digital version, the traditional version will surely look different. Let's see how it will look in the end, I will upload it 100%.

Of course, there is also a speedpaint video here, which will be uploaded in the next few days. 🔹 Program & Material(s): 🔹 Clip Studio Paint

See the full post

20 notes • Posted 2021-09-21 00:31:04 GMT

well... I don’t know what I can tell? ^^’

Maybe some can remember Toxx? My Inquest Krewe boss? Yep, here he is again. Similar to the picture I painted at the beginning of the year, but different.

And maybe I have some Zuko feelings with this picture? From Avatar? or rather Fire Nation feelings? Maybe? I have watching the two series the last two weeks and it might have come in a bit with? Possibly.

Anyway, I had my fun and I think you can see Toxx is not nice and you should be careful not to mess with him. He has not without reason his title "Destroyer". XD

🔹 Character: 🔹 Toxx

🔹 Program & Material(s): 🔹 Clip Studio Paint

See the full post

20 notes • Posted 2021-11-21 14:03:03 GMT

I haven't painted chibis for a long time and I also needed some new overlay for my streams. And so it came that I painted my Asurasona as a chibi. Of course, there is this version without staff, because not long Halloween is more.

🔹Character: 🔹 Wave - She is my Asurasona 🔹 Program & Material(s): 🔹 Clip Studio Paint

25 notes • Posted 2021-10-24 18:01:26 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #don't let me post this on the sideblog -.-#Guild Wars 2 #That fun #WaterdragonWave Art #My Art #My year 2021

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