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altivoMy younger brother (just 2 years younger) is a semi-professional magician, among other things. It's one of his avocations (along with musician) that I can relate to easily. As I worked on the fursuit design this weekend, it dawned on me that he might offer some little mime-like sleight of hand (sleight of hoof?) things that I could do to add interest to the character. It's nice to have at least one family member who won't freak out at having a furry in the family. At this point, I think neither of us is likely to surprise the other.
Anyway, he replied Sunday with encouragement, agreeing that it was a good idea, and sending a drawing of his concept of "pseudo-hooves" for the hands that would allow sufficient dexterity for simple stage or parlor tricks. I had suggested the linking ring tricks or possibly handkerchieves, and he countered with rope tricks as an appropriate tie-in (pun intentional, no doubt.) This was great.
What was not great: he did his diagram in PowerPoint, no doubt because it was the tool he had at hand and is most familiar with. Shouldn't be a problem, I have access to Powerpoint on Windows and I use OpenOffice on Linux which supposedly can read .ppt files as well. Except, he was using Outlook for his e-mail. Outlook has this nasty Micro$oft habit of burying attachments in its own private mime type, ms-tnef. In my experience, nothing but Outlook or Outlook Express understands this, so typically I end up with an attachment called winmail.dat that I can't read. Good old Micro$oft, trying to make sure that the entire market uses their product by defaulting to non-standard behaviors.
After some poking around and a false start with a Java-based decoder that just doesn't work, I found one for Linux that can read a winmail.dat file and extract the attachments. That did the trick, but why should this be necessary? We have international standards for mime and e-mail, yet the biggest corporate players persist in defying them whenever they feel like it.
(Have I mentioned before that I despise Microsloth? Probably...)
Anyway, he replied Sunday with encouragement, agreeing that it was a good idea, and sending a drawing of his concept of "pseudo-hooves" for the hands that would allow sufficient dexterity for simple stage or parlor tricks. I had suggested the linking ring tricks or possibly handkerchieves, and he countered with rope tricks as an appropriate tie-in (pun intentional, no doubt.) This was great.
What was not great: he did his diagram in PowerPoint, no doubt because it was the tool he had at hand and is most familiar with. Shouldn't be a problem, I have access to Powerpoint on Windows and I use OpenOffice on Linux which supposedly can read .ppt files as well. Except, he was using Outlook for his e-mail. Outlook has this nasty Micro$oft habit of burying attachments in its own private mime type, ms-tnef. In my experience, nothing but Outlook or Outlook Express understands this, so typically I end up with an attachment called winmail.dat that I can't read. Good old Micro$oft, trying to make sure that the entire market uses their product by defaulting to non-standard behaviors.
After some poking around and a false start with a Java-based decoder that just doesn't work, I found one for Linux that can read a winmail.dat file and extract the attachments. That did the trick, but why should this be necessary? We have international standards for mime and e-mail, yet the biggest corporate players persist in defying them whenever they feel like it.
(Have I mentioned before that I despise Microsloth? Probably...)
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Date: 2005-08-01 11:55 am (UTC)especially a brother.
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Date: 2005-08-01 11:55 am (UTC)^_^
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Date: 2005-08-01 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-01 01:45 pm (UTC)Its free.
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Date: 2005-08-01 05:27 pm (UTC)Of course they really hate both. They find them unpredictable, hard to use, irritating, and failure prone. But learning something new is scarier to them than living with the bugs and warts of what they already know.
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Date: 2005-08-01 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-01 12:22 pm (UTC)Funny you should mention them. I've just been wrestling with some of them myself - working on a decoder for MIME multipart streams*, and damn, the last thing we need is more standards for e-mail attachments. The ones we've got are complicated enough.
From hell's heart I stab at thee, o Microsoft.
Back to the topic, though - I rather like the idea of a horse doing rope tricks. I don't have much experience with 'suiting, though, so there isn't a whole lot I can really suggest.
*: Believe it or not, that's how file uploads are handled in HTTP. Horrifying, no?
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Date: 2005-08-01 05:29 pm (UTC)Where possible, I avoid HTTP for uploads and use something else, like good old FTP.