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Thursday, August 31, 2006

Ahh, so that's why I'm so skint at the moment

Blogger Joanna  Same here...

Lend us a tenner.... 
Anonymous Isobel  Spending £88 a day? I was lucky if I had that to spend for a week - for the two of us.
Mind you, all these new-fangled decimal pounds still confuse me. Bring back the groat ;o) 
Blogger Jane  Â£88 a day! Not round my jar of toffees. Somebody must have had a far better time than me. Unless the journos have only been interviewing themselves. So what with the cocaine and prada habits to maintain it begins to make sense. 
Anonymous Steph Angel  34... Ah them were the days... Two bob for a pint, tuppence hapenny for a bag of chips, penny chews, and mobile phones the size of a house!!!

It doesn't get any better by the way :-/ 
Blogger Clarissa  34... If I start saving now I should be able to afford the sort of expenditure indicated by the time that age rolls round. 
Anonymous Genette  The article finishes with this gem:
"Think about it: every man and woman in the UK has, on average, one breast and one testicle. Now that's gender equality."

I think we need more of Becky's maths classes... 
Blogger Connie Cox  Hmm I have until Saturday to sabe...bugger! 
Blogger Kath Adams  My thought process went something like...

£88.88 per day? Rubbish! That's err.. [scrambles for calculator, taps in 88.88*365] ahh, almost exactly my salary.

And how much more have I got in the bank this year compared to this time last year? Bog all.

So the only thing wrong is I reached that state six years too late (or I'm really only 34?).

I'd have a damn site more in the bank if Per Una & Next weren't available on-line! 
Blogger Connie Cox  hmm Nice typing by me there 
Anonymous Tiffany  Wonder how much it'll be in 14 years...when I'm 34... 
Anonymous Tiffany  Okay, the fact that no one said anything after me makes me feel very depressing. Forget I was even born, and return to the other dialogues already in progress. 
Blogger Becky  Aw Tiff! I think the conversation had died anyway, I don't think it's your fault. :-) 
Anonymous Tiffany  Okay, so it's just the fact that I'm across an ocean and the conversation was already over. Not just me. Gotcha. 

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Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Becky wuz here (and here... and here...)

So Flickr have properly integrated geotagging into their service, and it seems to work quite well.

I've spent a semi-constructive hour or so going through my old pics and tagging some of them with their locations. At first I just did the ones of interesting architecture and such, but then I thought: why not the ones of me too?

After all, Becky does get about a bit (quiet down at the back).

Early Morning on the Beach, Barcelona

So now you can find out just exactly where pictures like the one above were taken, if you were so moved.

One thing that annoys me a little is that they've used Yahoo's mapping service, which is a poor imitation of Google Maps. Flickr freely admit it's not as detailed as it should be, and are promising to work on it, but at the moment I'm wishing Google had bought Flickr and not Yahoo!

Labels:

Blogger Jane  Yahoo Maps are piss poor compared to Google Maps. 
Anonymous Magpie  I've spent far too much time over the last two days playing with this new toy, and I must say that while Yahoo maps are generally rubbish in comparison to google (coverage of birmingham is piss poor) there have been a few places where yahoo has actually had better coverage. 
Blogger Becky  Yeah you're right Clair, in some places the satellite coverage is better, it will be nice when they get proper road maps for the UK too.

I found the best technique was to find places in Google Maps, then switch to satellite view, and compare it to the satellite view in Flickr! :-) 
Blogger Jessica  2 things bothered me about their mapping thing, the yahoo maps are crap, and they don't geotag the images! The geotagging format is a common microstandard that loads of other utils make use of, they could have at least offered it as an option. It wouldn't have been half as bad if they had a proximity search in their api but they don't!

Oh and bex I'm listening to the soundtrack from our Barcelona DVD :) 
Blogger Cathii Scott  I agree that the Yahoo maps are aweful. Apparently the river that runs right through the middle of Perth is actually the Canning River and not the Swan River as every other map in the world shows it.

And what is with these markings on the maps that don't correspond with any feature I know of. Double dashed blue lines.... what are they? Alien landing zones? 
Anonymous Magpie  "I found the best technique was to find places in Google Maps, then switch to satellite view, and compare it to the satellite view in Flickr! :-) "

That's exactely what I was doing. One can only hope that now the yahoo maps are exposed to a much larger audience they'll invest more time in upgrading them. 
Anonymous Eduardo Manchon  For those of you who are from areas not well covered by Yahoo Maps, like England or Australia, our project Panoramio may be interesting. I mean, not like an alternative to Flickr, but just like a place focused in geolocated photos with Google Maps.

In Panoramio you can locate your photos via drag and drop interface using Google Maps. You can also watch the photos in Google Earth through KML feed.

Hope you like it, we have been working very hard on it

Eduardo 
Blogger jessica_sweet_tv_mx  It is a great idea indeed, to locate were pics were taken, but indeed the yahoo maps, don't have the capability or detail to do it properly 

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Tuesday, August 29, 2006

For pity's sake...

It's hard to sum up how much stuff like this pisses me off.

Being female, whether you've got a uterus or not, doesn't give you some God-given right to ridicule males. I think certain trannies seem to think that making piss-poor sexist jokes about men somehow makes them appear more like fully paid-up members of the female sex.

It doesn't. It makes them look facile and deluded.
Blogger VB-W  But everyone who's posting to this group has a dick anyway... 
Blogger Charlee Brown  It is a bit surreal. And OTT, I mean, men aren't THAT bad ;) 
Anonymous Tiffany  ...I rather like men.

What they're doing confuses me more than a little.. 
Blogger Connie Cox  If you think that's bad you should see some of the stuff on Roses ;-) 
Blogger hannaviolane  couldnt agree more becky, its like sexual equality gone mad sometimes i feel, ive worked in all female environments before and while that can have its girlie advantages the down side being, when the females are pissed off at their own male partners for whatever reason, its a 'lets slag ALL men off free for all!' and they would love to boast the 'men cant multi-task' thing as well

female multi tasking?:- attempting to do 5 things at once, completing 3 of them badly or wrongly and fouling up the other 2!

read the comment about the useless peice of skin at the end etc.....are some of these people on something!?! phah! 
Anonymous Isobel  Throwing rocks at people from the top of an ivory tower is bad enough, but from an imaginary one...?

Don't tar everyone with the same brush. 
Blogger Cathii Scott  Hmmm, would it be inappropriate to throw in an amazingly sexist joke at this point? 
Blogger Karol Cross  Would it make a difference if any of it was actually funny?

If it made you smile, instead of making you cringe and think "God I hope my friends don't see this?" 
Blogger Jane  Karol - interesting point, I don't think it is possible for jokes that are so full of loathing of men, like those are, to be funny.

Now there are plenty of funny jokes that comment on the male condition, just are there ones that comment on the female one. Jokes that come from life and observation have a place, rubbish like that doesn't. 

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Pyroclastic Flo

Is going to be my drag name, I've decided.

This might be related to me watching a thing about volcanoes on BBC2.

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Their quiet big

Tranny and TV cartoon strip

Labels:

Anonymous Tiffany  HAHAHA. 
Blogger Joanna  Great stuff. Can you do my site too?

And who writes *giggle* on a website eh? ;-) 
Blogger Siobhan Curran  There is not enough Comic Sans on the intarweb

*gnart* 
Blogger Stegbeetle  Very good, although too few exclamation marks to be realistic!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Incidentally, your attention is drawn to
http://simunation.blogspot.com/2006/08/curses.html

which I thought was funny. 
Blogger Connie Cox  Shiteplayer...pmsl! 
Blogger Charlee Brown  I hope you appreciate, that my non-queer friends are being drawn into this by your comic ;) Exceeellllent :D 
Blogger Jane  It's the squishy and not completely downloaded pictures that really tickle me.

Steg - Sim's curses cartoon is brill too, very talented cartoonist. 
Blogger Joanna  And it could be improved by a patterned background, preferably animated. 
Anonymous fairly-odd  And where's the obligatory disclaimer on the first page? You know the one: i'm a trans****, blah, blah, so click here to enter or here to leave??

Oh, and that background .bmp is much too boring... 
Blogger Freiya  very funny :) i love the bad spelling.... 
Anonymous Alli' Cat'  Arf, arf!
*snigger* ;-) 
Blogger jessica_sweet_tv  And the flash animations?? 
Blogger Karol Cross  Comic Sans and *giggle*? Wow Siobhan will be happy!

Have to agree with Jane, its the huge thumbnails which made me laugh. Although a repeating photo as a background is also one of my pet peeves.

p.s.
Can I ask is it an age thing (or is it just me?) but am I the only one who really doesn't see the point of yahoo 360 and myspace? 

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Thursday, August 24, 2006

Tranny Makeup - The Becky Way (Part One)

I get the occasional email from newbie trannies asking me how to get started with cosmetics. I normally end up firing off an email with some of the basic things I've learned. Each email ends up being pretty similar, so I thought, why not write down everything I know about makeup in one place?

So here it is, my guide to tranny makeup.

The first thing to say is that this is by no means definitive. And what works for me may not work for you at all. Everyone is different, and everyone finds their own best practices. So this is my personal guide to what works for me. That's why I called it the Becky Way. If you want a second opinion, I suggest Miss K's excellent tips. She'll tell you to do it completely differently. Neither of us is wrong.

In the beginning I used to experiment a lot, but when I find something that works, I tend to stick to it. I'm not one for trying new techniques very often, especially as normally when I'm getting ready I'm in a hurry, and experimenting leads to mistakes which leads to delays. If you're reading this and you're already good at doing your own makeup you'll probably think some of my techniques are dumb, and you're probably right. But, like I said, they work for me.

That's why everything is written from my point of view. Read each sentence as if it starts "in my opinion" or "in my experience". If you think that what I'm talking about will work for you too, then try it. Just don't blame me if it doesn't!

Attitude

The first thing that it's important to get right is how to approach makeup. We're not trying to emulate how a woman applies makeup, we're trying to emulate how a woman looks with makeup on. It's the difference between method and result. Girls don't use makeup in the same way that trannies do. Girls already tend to have feminine features, so they use makeup to enhance and add colour. Guys tend not to have feminine features, so makeup serves to modify the shape of the face, as well as enhancing and adding colour.

Horrendous generalisation: most woman haven't a clue how to do tranny makeup. Of course, they'll tell you that they've had a whole lifetime of practice, but it's practice on their own girlish faces! Their whole ethos is "less is more", and "subtle is better". This works really well on a female face, on a male face it tends to get lost in the general cragginess and blokishness. Ask a girl who's never made up a guy to do your makeup and, while the result will be expertly applied and beautifully subtle, you'll look like a geezer wearing expertly applied and beautifully subtle makeup.

Don't listen to girls, they're scary and they carry cooties. Listen to me!

My ethos is more is less: put more on than a girl would, and you'll look more like a girl.

Within reason, obviously. Put on too much slap and you'll look like a clown, or a bad drag queen.

But "drag queen" isn't necessarily anathema to trannies. Actually, a lot of what I do is based on drag queen makeup techniques. This is because drag queens tend to be doing an extreme version of what we want to achieve. Drag queens want to over-emphasize all the feminine features: high thin eyebrows, strong cheekbones, full lips, wide eyes. By taking what the best drag queens do and throttling it back a few notches, we can get results which feminize the male face enough to make it look girlish but not too "draggy".

Time and Patience

One of the most important things when working with makeup is giving yourself enough time.

A tranny once asked me how long it took me to get ready. I said "all told, about three hours".

They laughed and said that was a ridiculous amount of time, and it never took them more than 30 minutes.

I smiled and thought, "yeah, it shows".

Of course, every tranny has a different idea of how much they want to achieve, and how long they want to spend on achieving it. From a cold start, it takes me about three hours. Of course, that includes cleaning, de-fuzzing, plucking, dressing, re-dressing, wigging, bejeweling, manicuring and perfuming; as well as the actual time spent making up my face!

The important thing is that good makeup takes time. Especially when you're new at it. It's important not to feel rushed, because that's when you make mistakes which are hard to fix.

Also it's important to have patience. During the process of making up you're going to look worse before you start looking better. In my early days messing about with makeup I used to get half way through applying foundation, see my Bride-of-Frankenstien reflection in the mirror, and give up. With makeup, things never really come together until you've completely finished, don't get too disheartened half-way through.

...

Wow, a lot of writing and we've not even touched the makeup case yet! In the next installment I'll write about my essential kit, and how to prepare your face.

That is, if you're interested? :-/

Labels:

Blogger April Angell  Lauren Scarlet also has some great makeup guides for a third opinion... 
Blogger Becky T  Eewww, yuck, I've got cooties! I'm sure I never used to! Do hormones cause them? 
Blogger Siobhan Curran  What exactly are "cooties"? I've always wondered.

(I, for one, am interested to hear the next installment BTW. I'm forever fucking up my make-up) 
Blogger Jane  What are cooties? and why are they bad?

You forgot about 3 re-dressings 
Blogger Kat  Or you could merely direct them to this, as ably produced by our mate Kymme.

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=tszuje 
Blogger Charlee Brown  Erm, where's the one for us cootie carriers who need a lesson? 
Anonymous Alli' Cat'  More please.
B.T.W. For 'cooties', try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooties 
Blogger VB-W  How about making a video of this for YouTube?

If anyone can make hits out of 'How to make up like a chav' and 'How to make a pancake' you could be onto a winner. 
Blogger Julie Budd  Thanks for taking the time to do this excercise. Looking forward to th enext instalment.

So far so good, I've got my mirror and my three hours... now please hurray up! 

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Trannies like me like Meh

Uncovered at last:

BBC researcher reveals Miss K's first name to be "Meh". :-D

Do you get the feeling some researcher didn't actually do any research?
Blogger Charlee Brown  ROFL 
Anonymous fairly-odd  :-D !!! 
Blogger Siobhan Curran  I love how it says "sorry to email you out of the blue". Not only a lack of research, but also a complete "missing the point" understanding of what a comment on a weblog is... 
Blogger Miss K  meh 

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Wednesday, August 23, 2006

A slow news day, even by Norfolk standards

Final item on tonight's Look East:

"And a moos-flash from the farm: cows have accents!"
Blogger sim  It made radio 2 also. 
Anonymous Tidy  Blimey is "Look East" still on? That brings back memories. Is the EDP still in print too? 
Blogger Jane  Yep and Yep 
Blogger Jane  It also made R4 they spent about 3 mins discussing the science behind it on the 6 o'clock news 
Blogger Becky  I bet they didn't use the "moos-flash" pun. 
Blogger Jessica  It must have made it to radio 1 too, because I had a dream this morning about a huge heffa with a leeds accent. Must have been Chris Moyles 
Blogger VB-W  Go ahead. Milk it for all it's worth. 
Blogger Kris  Incidentally, did you hear that the other week a cow won a Nobel Prize?

Apparently it was outstanding in its field. 
Anonymous NH  Personally, I have no beef with that pun. It could have been worse; they could have said "Shake, Cattle and Roll".

Time to hoof it out of here. It's been veally good seeing your site again, Becky. 
Blogger Becky  With puns like these, who needs enemies. ;-) 

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Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Saucy Minx

Tranny and TV cartoon strip

Labels:

Anonymous Steph Angel  Ads by Google

Buy Saucy Minx on eBay!!!

These are getting WAY surreal now :D 
Blogger Becky  What's so surreal about a television having an inflatible radio as an imaginary sex partner?

... oh ...

I'm on a downward spiral, aren't I? :-/ 
Anonymous Zaida Angel  Surreal == Awesome, in my opinion. 
Blogger Siobhan Curran  That digital camera is HAWT 
Anonymous Alli' Cat'  Me likey - lots! 
Anonymous Natalie  OMG. The Mac commercial with the Japanese girl is the best one. And now you've ripped off it and used an inflatible radio in the same line of thought.....


That's bloody brilliant! 
Anonymous nick  cute and funny, and a little bit sexy. 

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Sunday, August 20, 2006

Don't you know who we are?

This weekend Jane finally completed her Grand Tour of my semi-regular tranny haunts. Having blown out Pink due to the weather, and on a bit of a whim, I decided to take her to the Fox and Hounds in Essex.

It's a bit of a trek from my place (in fact it's about the furthest distance you can travel in a straight line within East Anglia), so I don't make the trip as often as I'd like. Which is a shame because it's a quite nice venue. A little oasis of camp in the Essex countryside!

In fact, this was the first time I'd been in over a year. It's not changed much. They've knocked through a wall to put the pool table in it's own room, and they no longer seem to serve food (as far as I could tell), but that's about it.

There were only two other trannies there, which seemed a little unusual. Wednesday is their regular "tranny night" and the place is heaving with us, but there's usually a smattering at the weekend too. Perhaps Pink over in Cambridge was a bigger draw than I'd expected.

Jane and I had been there a while soaking up the atmosphere and enjoying people-watching when a tranny who'd arrived after us came over and said hello. She asked if we were together, and seemed suprised that Jane was accepting of me as a tranny. I explained that Jane had known about Becky before we'd even met, as we'd both got blogs.

Blank looks. Jane explained what a blog was, and how she'd got to know me a little through mine.

She then got the idea that maybe Jane fancied trannies, and it took a bit of explaining that Jane hadn't been trawling the net for trannies (she wasn't, she promises me!) it was just that she was OK with it, and found it kinda fun.

She then wanted to know how often I dressed, from my "look" she'd expected me to be full time (I'd made about my usual amount of effort). Then she asked if Jane was prepared for me to start wanting to dress "more and more"?

I explained that I was a pretty casual tranny, and since my early days of being out I'd actually dressed less and less, and in fact the last time I'd fully dressed up was Sparkle.

More blank looks, so we explained that Sparkle was a big tranny meet back in June, then incredulous looks that I'd not dressed in over a month.

It was at this point I decided I'd much rather be elsewhere. So Jane and I went dancing.

Meeting that tranny made me realise that I'm living in a bit of a bubble when it comes to where I think we are at. The we in the title doesn't refer to me and Jane (I'm not that big headed, honest), it refers to Trannies Like Me.

If you're reading this and you're a tranny, then Trannies Like Me probably includes You.

Trannies Like Me have, or seek, partners who see them as a whole. Parters who are neither repelled by trannies nor actively seek them.

Trannies Like Me know that these partners are special, but not unusual.

Trannies Like Me aren't defined by how often we dress, we're defined just by the fact that we dress, and we identify as a tranny because we dress.

Trannies Like Me are capable of wanting to look fantastic (I said "wanting", not often "managing") without wanting to go "full time".

Trannies Like Me feel a part of a wider community through the internet. We might not have blogs, we might not participate much, but we gain a wider understanding of what it means to be a tranny by seeing what other trannies are doing.

Trannies Like Me exist. Don't you know who we are?

Labels: ,

Anonymous Beki  Yey!!

Go "Trannies Like Me"! 
Blogger Kat  Indeed. We went to a ball on Saturday, where there were few Trannies Like Me and lots of Trannies Like That.

Amusingly scary. 
Blogger Miss K  There's another category - Trannies Like Meh 
Blogger Beckie J (Confessions of a Transitional Tranny)  I can identify so much with what you’re saying. One of the things that draws me to your blog, and a couple of other ‘Trannies Like Me’ ones, is the sheer open-mindedness, intelligence and general good-will that exudes from them. Being a trannie is also a state-of-mind - in a way the dressing up is ‘just’ a fun declaration of this. 
Blogger Valerie S  If Trannies Like That never see Trannies Like Me, how could they be anything else?
Give an opportunity. Adopt a Tranny Like That today! 
Anonymous NH  Wise words there, mate.

I smiled wryly at the other tranny's usual suspects list of questions and remarks. It's like the tranny chat room 101 of conversation topics (maybe she had bought the Wheel-O-Tranny-Topics). 
Anonymous Erika Baarova  What a wonderful post, you can be sure of it.
I am a tranny like me but then I would be would I not? 
Blogger Pandora Caitiff  If the tranny you met didn't know about casual trannies, or blogs, I wonder where she got the location from? Apart from the bloggosphere and The Angels, I must admit I try not to indulge in tranny-culture online. (I think I grew out of Fictionmania when I went out dressed for the first time :) )

I suppose we must remember that not all trannies are like us, or you, or me, or whatever I'm trying to say here.. 
Blogger Gillian  trannies like me, muggles like me, everyone likes me, I'm just adorable.

Nice point on the partners who actively seek trannies, I don't want someone who wants me *because* I'm a tranny, I want someone who wants me *despite* being a tranny. 
Blogger Karol Cross  Spot on Becky. I guess we tend to surround ourselves with trannie friends who have a similar outlook to us. So its a bit of a shock when you come face to face with someone whos perspective is so alien.

And totally agree with Gillian, she is adorable! :o) And the partners thing too. Although I know I couldn't go out with a woman who didnt actively enjoy the trannie part of my life. And fancy the pant(ie)s off me! ;o) 
Anonymous Stephanie Delacey  When I first encountered the Wonderful World of Transvestism back in the mid 80s it seemed like you joined the Beaumont Society or nothing. It was rather hard to find anything out about them as they were so secretive but it all seemed a bit, well, odd to me. I wasn't at all inspired to join in the fun - so I ended up going underground for a long time. When I discovered Trannies Like Me through blogs and their attendant activities I was so excited. I had to become part of it. One of the things that made me excited was that when I did encounter Trannies Like Me I discovered that they weren't like me at all. That was brilliant, and liberating, to see that transvestites did indeed come in all kinds of packages. What had depressed me about old-style trannying was their insistence on there being a proper way to be a transvestite (my particular bugbear being "Transvestites aren't gay, oh no" - er, right, that's told me). What I find curious, and what I want to ask Trannies Like That, is why they aren't excited by our brave new world. What makes them see the old ways as preferable? Of course, we'll never know - because they don't blog and tell us what they think about anything. 
Blogger Connie Cox  Oh I see a whole new thing here.
TLM badges, t-shirts, makeup, perfume etc etc

T L M! T L M! T L M!
It could work.....honest! 
Blogger Michelle Faith  when I found out a few years ago that I could be a tranny like that it blew me away. it was great fun and a totally freeing thought 
Anonymous Michelle Grrrl  Hear! Hear! The internet has completely blown the lid of alot of preconceptions about what being a tranny entails, which has helped me come on leaps and bounds.

Before I felt I would be a total outcast from any scene, as the librarian with too much blusher look never really suited me, and I don't like Shania Twain. Still to find a tranny club that plays The Fall though.. 

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Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Morph me beautiful

I've just been playing with the demo version of My Perfect Picture.

By analysing survey data on what makes a face good-looking, the software developers have developed a "beauty function" to quantify attractiveness.

Using a this function, this software can now adjust digital portraits to fit more closely to the ideal, so that they look more "attractive".

Two things interest me about this. Firstly, the generally ethics of it. Is it "cheating" to electronically change the shape of your face in a picture to make yourself look more attractive than you actually are?

Probably yes. But then again, makeup and camera angles can change the shape of a face in a similar ways, are they "cheating" too? And everyone with an ounce of savvy in digital photography knows how to fiddle with levels and touch-up tools to make themselves look better. Where do you draw the line as to what's acceptable digital manipulation and what isn't?

I'd draw the line somewhere well before morphing your face, but that's a gut feeling rather than based on any hard-and-fast criteria.

The other interesting thing is that you can set it to work to a feminine or a masculine ideal, in fact the demo version of the software only works for female faces. That's not going to stop an enterprising tranny like me from trying the obvious: a female transform on their male mug!

The results were... strange. It looked like a more female version of me, but it didn't look like me.

One of the great things when I see good pics of Becky is the feeling of seeing a girl who looks like me. Using this software on my tranny pics would probably generate a more female-looking picture, but it wouldn't look like me, and wouldn't give me the same rush.

So maybe that's where you draw the line: when you reach the point during "enhancement" that you can't see yourself in a picture anymore, then you're cheating.
Blogger Pandora Caitiff  I think I draw the line at anything that couldn't be reproduced offline short of surgery. So touching up red eye, or hiding blemishes is fine.
My Hot or Not pic has a little bit of Photoshop touch-up as I missed a spot with the foundation and I had a bright pink blotch on my nose 
Blogger Beckie J (Confessions of a Transitional Tranny)  Agree with the above and the above. However, I do recommend playing with virtual makeover sites, like this one, especially for transitional trannies like myself, since I am currently unable to try out any real wigs or lots of different types of make-up. This together, with cutting and pasting potential wigs in Photoshop, can have ‘pretty’ reasonable results – even if restricted to a rather dull passport pose. Great for students like me who can’t afford too much real world trial and error. 
Blogger Siobhan Curran  You know, I would download that and fire up Virtual PC just to see, were it not for the fact that I'm physically shaking after seeing the huge 'before' photo on the demo page... 
Blogger Pandora Caitiff  I downloaded and had a play with Picture Perfect. All it seems to do is narrow your nose and smooth out the skin (but keep the eyes and lips sharp).

It did make me look fabulous though :) 

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Monday, August 14, 2006

Pneumatically-breasted supermodel

Tranny and TV cartoon strip. They go into Second Life.

Labels:

Blogger Siobhan Curran  *arf!* :-D 
Blogger Kris  I think that's my favourite one yet. :-) 
Blogger Miss K  ROTFLMFAO! 
Anonymous Sirena  That's great!

You're in Second Life, too? 
Blogger Becky  Not very often, my MMO of choice is World of Warcraft at the moment, Sirena. :-) 
Blogger Joggerblogger  :-D funny! 
Blogger April Angell  yes this is very good 
Anonymous Alli' Cat'  Nice one - But I'll never see my toaster in quite the same light! 

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Help my blog is about maths

Becky:
What to do?! What to do?!

Becky spots parcel marked
EMERGENCY TRANNY AND TV STRIP.
OPEN ONLY IN DIRE CIRCUMSTANCES
(E.G. YOUR BLOG HAS TURNED
INTO A MATHS LESSON.)

SFX: Paper ripping.
Blogger Jane  Well if you do host the The UK Angles, it was only a matter of time. 
Anonymous Genette  Becky,

Sorry, I did like the idea of getting rid of families with only boys though, on grounds of taste...

Genette 
Blogger Beckie J (Confessions of a Transitional Tranny)  Heard the doors puzzle many years ago and have always wanted a good explanation of how it works. So cheers for sorting that out. 'Half' the funny of tranny blogs is the electic mix of the weird and wonderful - which includes conducting maths lessons on a TV blog. 

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Sunday, August 13, 2006

Sunday Answers

You've suffered enough, here are the answers to Friday's puzzles.
You are on a game show and the host shows you three doors. The host tells you that behind one of the doors is a pot of gold, and the other two are empty. The host knows which door holds the gold. He gets you to choose one, then he chooses another one and opens it to show it's empty. He then offers you to keep the door you chose, or swap to the third, unopened door. Is it better to stay with your door or swap?
The answer is it's better to swap, because the third door is twice as likely to hold the gold.

The best way to work out why, is to change the problem. Imagine instead of 3 doors there are 1000 doors. Again the host knows which 1 door has the gold. When you've chosen a door, he opens 998 doors to show they're empty, and offer for you to swap the door you've chosen with the 1 door he didn't open. In this case it's almost certain that you didn't choose the right door first off, and therefore almost certain that the one door he didn't open holds the gold. The 3 door version is just a scaled down version of that.

Another way to think about it is the total odds involved. The odds always have to add up to 1. When you choose one door, you've got a 1/3rd chance of being right, and each of the other 2 doors have 1/3rd each, adding up to a total of 1. When the host opens one of the other doors to show it's empty, he removes the odds of it being right, making it zero. Your door hasn't changed, so it still only has a 1/3rd chance of holding the gold. That means to get a total of 1, the other door now has a 2/3rds chance of holding the gold.

Now the other one:
A married couple have two children. You know that one of the children is a girl, what are the rough odds that the other one is a boy?
It took me an age to get my head around this one. When we do basic probability at school we're taught that probabilities have no memory. Tossing a coin and it coming up head doesn't make it any more or less likely for it to come up heads the next time you toss it.

At first glances you think that's what being asked here. You're told that one child is a girl, the other child has to be fifty-fifty girl or boy, right?

Wrong, actually the other child is twice as likely to be a boy than a girl. Or in other words, 2/3rds of the time it will be a boy.

The reason is subtle. The question doesn't say, for example, "the oldest child is a girl", it says one of the children is a girl. What this question is really asking is: what are the odds that a family with two children has a mixture of one boy and one girl?

It helps to think of the children as X and Y. Child X has a (roughly) 50:50 chance of being a boy or a girl. So has child Y. Knowing this, we can make a table of all the possible combinations of children.

Child XChild Y
boyboy
boygirl
girlboy
girlgirl


So there are four different options, each equally likely. We know that one of the children is a girl, so the first option is out. That leaves three other options, two of which have a boy/girl mix. Therefore in 2 occurrences out of 3, the other child will be a boy.

Brain hurt now?
Blogger Joanna  At first glances you think that's what being asked here. You're told that one child is a girl, the other child has to be fifty-fifty girl or boy, right?

See the boy/girl one I still dont get. It is not exactly 50:50 boy/girl, but its near enough. It's either xx or xy. Thats 50:50

If you toss a coin and get 19 heads, it is still 50:50 that the next one will be a head, surely?

Unless its a double headed coin?

So it doesn't matter at all what their other child is. This has no memory either, its exactly the same as the coin. Unless you are bringing in some area of biology I don't know about.

Which is why I am a biologist, and not a mathematician, I guess... 
Blogger Becky  It took me a while to get it too, Joanna. It is very subtle. You're right that if I said "Their oldest child is a girl", then that would have absolutely no influnce on the other child. But we're saying that "one of the kids is a girl". That puts a completely different spin on the question.

Try it yourself, toss a pair of coins few hundred times (or mock it up in a spreadsheet package), then delete all the instances when there are two heads. The mixed tails-heads combos will be twice as common as the tails-tails combination.

Stuff like this expands the mind in a good way, it's worth trying to get familiar with it. I look forward to some biology puzzles on your blog. ;-) 
Blogger VB-W  'We know that one of the children is a girl, so the first option is out'

'the other child is twice as likely to be a boy than a girl'

Remove option one and you have options totalling 4 girls and 2 boys, which I see as twice as many chances of a girl than a boy, not vice versa. 
Blogger Becky  "Remove option one and you have options totalling 4 girls and 2 boys, which I see as twice as many chances of a girl than a boy, not vice versa."

You can't just count the numbers. There are three options left. In two of the three options there is a boy in the set. In one there isn't. Therefore 2 out three. 
Blogger Joanna  You're right that if I said "Their oldest child is a girl", then that would have absolutely no influnce on the other child. But we're saying that "one of the kids is a girl". That puts a completely different spin on the question.

Sorry.. I don't see a difference in whether its their oldest or not. Maybe its the wine.

If I toss a coin and its a Head. What is the chance of the next one being a head? It's still 50:50 as far as I can see. And will be everytime I toss the coin.

I know this is the Alan Davies response.. ;)

If I toss a coin 100 times, and its been heads all the way. The coin doesn't know that. So if I ask you what will it be next - its just as likely to be a head or a tail.. I've just been very very "lucky" in getting 99 heads so far, but its not impossible.

Hmm.. I'll sleep on it ;) 
Blogger Cathii Scott  So if I ask you what will it be next - its just as likely to be a head or a tail.

Perfectly correct, but the word you used is next. If you had said one of the coin tosses is tails the answer maybe different. Like Becky said get 2 coins and toss them, record each coin for each toss. if you toss them enough you will see that combination of coins that show at least one head is 3 times more likely than no heads, and the same for tails. Obviously then this can't be 50/50.

Biology is much harder than maths anyway!

Cathii 
Blogger Becky  "If I toss a coin and its a Head. What is the chance of the next one being a head? It's still 50:50 as far as I can see. And will be every time I toss the coin."

Yes, it is. The NEXT coin will be 50:50 heads or tails. You're a hundred percent right that one coin toss has absolutely no influence on the NEXT coin toss or any other coin toss. But that's not the question. The equivalent question in terms of coins is "I tossed two coins. One landed on heads, what are the odds the other one landed on tails?"

As I was writing this, Cathii made the same point better... well done Cath. ;-)

It's fascinating in that we get the "one dice roll doesn't influence the next" thing drummed into us when learning about probabilities, so much so that it misleads us when it comes to questions like this.

One great way to prove this would be to have a competition. :-)

We both bring £100 in pound coins. We get an independent person to toss two coins at a time in secret, then to tell us the status of either coin at random. (E.g. "One coin is showing a head"). We then both guess what the other coin is showing. If we're right, we get to keep both coins, if we're wrong, the other person gets them. If we're both right, one coin each.

I confidently predict if I was playing based on my theory, and you were playing on the "totally random" theory, I'd walk away with more money than you. In fact, I'd give you an extra £100 if I lost. ;-)

More seriously, getting back to my comment about juries in my original post, this is what I find interesting:

You're a very educated person and intelligent person, and you're having trouble understanding this fairly simple piece of probability (as I did at first).

Imagine then the average juror expected to make decisions about someones guilt based on things like, for example, "the likelihood that two babies in the same family would die of cot death". Probability issues like this are not necessarily identical to the puzzle above, but they still require more than a layman's understanding of how probability works. I wonder how many times a the application of "common sense" probability has led to miscarriages of justice. 
Blogger Joanna  Thanks girls.

I'm off to make babies in Excel.... 
Blogger Joanna  OK gotcha now...

I need to see it in black and white with the model to get a handle on it. And once I did it in Excel I see what you mean.

(53 BB, 102 GB, 45 GG)

Now, about these lottery numbers...... 
Blogger Becky  Heheh.

I needed to see it in black and white too, just to be sure. :-)

Here's the Excel spreadsheet I made. 
Anonymous Genette  Hi Becky,

I'm not convinced. The problem with your lovely spreadsheet is the assumption that each of the three possibilites - BG, GB and GG - are equally likely, given we know there are two children and at least one is a girl. In fact, the GG option is twice as likely as each of the other options. (Because there are two girls, instead of one.) To get the correct answer from your spreadsheet, you need to find the string "girl", then check whether the other sibling is "boy" or "girl". (Because "girl" appears twice in the GG families, you need to count each "girl".) You will find it is 50/50 after all.
Another way of looking at it is to consider the elder, younger situation. We don't know whether the girl is older or younger, but we know she is one or the other. This means one of the BG/GB possibilities can be ruled out. We don't know which one, but we know one of them can be.

Love,

Genette 
Blogger Becky  LOL Genette, if you don't believe me, maybe you'll believe Doctor Math. :-)

And if you don't believe Dr. Math, perhaps you'd like to take me up on my pound coin challenge? ;-) 
Anonymous Genette  Becky,

I'm sure I won't convince you, but maybe you could tell me which part of this is wrong:

The girl we know about could be

a) the elder child in a girl-boy family
b) the younger child in a boy-girl family
c) the elder child in a girl-girl family
d) the younger child in a girl-girl family

Each of these is equally likely.

The fact that c and d look the same, doesn't mean we can count them as being the same. To put it in terminology like Dr Math's (and to show why he is wrong!) it's not a case of counting the paths, but counting how often the path is travelled!

As for the money challenge, you amuse me far to much to upset you by taking money off you!

Love,

Genette 
Blogger Siobhan Curran  None of those four statements is wrong - but they have nothing to do with the original question.

> the GG option is twice as likely as each of the other options

This is wrong. The GG option is exactly the same likeliness as the other two. All three options have a 1/3 probability.

However, because BG and GB both result in you having one boy and one girl, the probability of those combined is 2/3. Hence you're twice as likely to have a boy and a girl, than two girls.

Doctor Maths is my dad. True story 
Anonymous Zaida Angel  however, one should take into account more than just the shape of their funny bits.

YES, I'M TALKING OF TRANSGENDER.

lol :P

(and what about sexual position which are suppossed to improve the odds of having a boy or a girl? Or what about the genetic history of the parents? or what if they artificially alter the baby? etc.) 
Blogger Becky  Zaida: :-P ;-)

Genette: I admit you make a convincing argument, and my lack of maths knowledge makes it hard to show exactly where you're wrong, but it's something like this.

You're assuming that a girl-girl mix is twice as likely as a boy-girl mix. This is wrong. Boy-girl mixes turn up twice as often as girl-girl mixes. There's a simple way to prove this. Just toss a pair of coins and count the ratio of heads-heads that appear compared to mixed heads-tails. Mixed heads-tails will turn up twice as much, in the long game, as heads-heads.

Oh, and when you've done that, and you're STILL not convinced, you might want to re-write the Wikipedia Article which also must be wrong. ;-) 
Blogger Becky  Actually, MY brain hurts now. I've just read this which muddies the whole thing. It seems there are lots of ways to interpret the question, which makes the whole thing ambiguous!

Nobody's wrong. Comments closed. Moving on! :-) 

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Friday, August 11, 2006

King's Lynn Long Island Ice Tea


1 measure gin
1 measure vodka
1 measure tequila
1 measure rum
1 measure Cointreau
2 measures lime cordial

Shake with plenty of ice.
Pour into glasses.
Top up with some Coke.
Drink.

Blog about how good it is: "It is very good".
Make more.
Drink.
Fall over.

Blogger Jane  Eat slightly strange tasting marmite on toast. 
Blogger Pandora Caitiff  Bedside Mana: Generous gin and tonic plus Night Nurse
(c) Harry Sadist 
Blogger sim  Hmm, drink. Repeat until dead.

I think the cordial is a bit excessive though. 
Blogger hannaviolane  good job there isnt too much alcohol in it then! :)jees! 
Blogger April Angell  ewww - sounds a bit much - hows your head? :-)

And surely it should be served in a highball, not a tumbler. tut tut. 
Blogger Becky  Actually they're really nice, it's basically a proper Long Island Ice Tea, but with lime cordial instead of sweet and sour mix. Suprisingly, the taste is quite mellow and not just "alcohol". :-)

But yeah, 3 will do you for an evening. Use plenty of ice and drink slow. :-) 
Blogger Valerie S  And how are you feeling today? 

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The dog didn't eat it

Okay...

So you know when you have an idea and you think "that'll be great, and everyone will join in and it will be the best blog post evah", and when you actually do it, it turns out to be, well, a bit shit?

Ages ago I got some of you to nominate your favorite tranny movies ever. Then I got you all to vote on your favorites. Then I got you to talk about why you liked them. The idea was to compile it into a great big all-singing all-dancing website feature.

Well, it didn't really work. For a number of reasons...
  • Some pretty shameless vote rigging (whatever way you turn it, Cathii, The Matrix is not a tranny film!) ;-)

  • A patchy response to the request for feedback (some of you took the time to write back some great stuff, others... meh)

  • When I sat down to write reviews of each film, I found out: I'm not a good film review writer.
All of which added up to making the whole thing a bit of a chore to compile together. I've had several cracks at it, but it just wasn't working. I'm sorry!

But, there were a lot of nominations, and there was a great response when it came to the voting stage...

So, as voted by you, and here for you to pick holes in and argue over, is...

The Top 10 Best Tranny Movies of All Time
  1. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

  2. Some Like it Hot

  3. The Crying Game

  4. The Rocky Horror Picture Show

  5. Hedwig and the Angry Inch

  6. To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar

  7. Ed Wood

  8. Moulin Rouge

  9. Boys Don't Cry

  10. Tootsie
Anonymous Stephanie Delacey  Oh, I didn't vote for any of them!! 
Blogger Ciara  Any list that doesn’t have Tiresia on it is frankly lacking. Ok so you shouldn’t watch it on your own and without a stiff drink, you may not sleep after it and it is in subtitles but it’s quiet simply the best TS film ever. 
Blogger Pandora Caitiff  Yeah, that looks about right

And even non-trannys like Priscilla!

Should have asked some z-list celebs to comment. I'm sure Paul Ross and Justin Lee Collins would have done it for free :D 
Blogger Cathii Scott  That wasn't vote rigging.... It was merely "creative campaigning"! (or at least I will hold to that line til the Feds show up!)

Seen every one of them on the list except for Some like it hot and Moulin Rouge (I really can't stand Nicole after her performance in "BMX Bandits") For my money Boys don't cry is the superior film on that list. The only film there to show trannies (in this case an f2m) in any other light than either the comic character or the sultry suductress.

Having said that, Rocky Horror still ROCKS!!!!

VOTE 1
Vote MATRIX!
 
Blogger Sandie Dee  Matrix should be a tranny film! Except that I hate Trinity 'cause I know I can never look like that... but I wish I could!! Mind you, if the Matrix were real ;-) Could one of you computer geniuses please team up with a biologist quick and make a VR programme that will let me *be* Trin please :-) 
Anonymous Stephanie Delacey  "And even non-trannys like Priscilla!"

Exactly why I didn't like it. Camp for straight people. 
Blogger Charlee Brown  For some reason, I feel I'm gonna get lynched for this, but what about the Birdcage? 
Blogger Becky  La Cage Aux Folles (the original French version) is in the top 20, somewhere! 
Blogger Cathii Scott  And the Matrix?????? :p 
Blogger Becky  Having a director who may or may not be a tranny (I read all the stuff I could find about him and even that fact seems debatable) does not a tranny movie make! :-P 
Anonymous NH  I see my two nominations (and as a lapsed tranny, I was still asked and gladly put my ha'penneth in) didn't make the top 10, but one isn't that well remembered and one is a bit of a sideways nomination:

My first was "Just Like A Woman" with Julie Walters; it's very predictable and cheesy and not very well written or directed but it's the only one where the tranny doesn't totally camp it up or want a sex change. He just likes the clothes, OK?

My second nomination was "Carry On Cabby" which not only contains the first dragging up as a disguise situation (I tell you, the girls won't like it, Sid), when Kenneth Connor has to go undercover at Glamcabs, but that Glamcab uniform was very nice indeed and you get a great scene of our dragged up Ken having to keep his cool when all the other girl cabbies are getting changed. It perfectly encapsulated the agony a tranny goes through when trying to pass... 
Anonymous Alli' Cat'  'bout bloody time!
;-) 

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Friday Mind-Bender

One of my pet interests is logic puzzles, particularly ones relating to odds and statistics. Here are two classic logic problems, both of which have answers that go against what you might consider "common sense":
  1. You are on a game show and the host shows you three doors. The host tells you that behind one of the doors is a pot of gold, and the other two are empty. The host knows which door holds the gold. He gets you to choose one, then he chooses another one and opens it to show it's empty. He then offers you to keep the door you chose, or swap to the third, unopened door. Is it better to stay with your door or swap?

  2. A married couple have two children. You know that one of the children is a girl, what are the rough odds that the other one is a boy?
Have a think about it, I'll give you the answers later. Then have a think about the fact that often juries are asked to make decisions based on a "common sense" understanding of statistics, and get a bit worried.
Blogger Jane  do you want us to answer these in the comments or send you an email, will there be a prize for the especially selected winner?

Say trip to King's Lynn, Thai Green Curry and Long Island Iced Tea chez Bex? 
Blogger Becky  You can answer in the comments. There'll be no prize except the pride of everyone knowing what a clever clogs you are. 
Blogger Siobhan Curran  I've seen Jessica get the first one wrong elsewhere on the net ;-P 
Blogger Becky  Have you? I've had a niggling feeling I've blogged about this before. :-S 
Blogger Siobhan Curran  It was on a different blog.

There are many ways to explain the first one - I like to think about it as the odds of "getting things wrong", rather than the odds of which box.

But yes, I too worry about juries... 
Blogger Valerie S  This is fun! I'll give my bets, a bit shady so I don't ruin anybodys fun:
1) depends on things but if the presenter had the gold there wouldn't be anymore suspense and he'd kind of ruined the show..?
2) I suppose here we are looking at all the families, not an individual child.. 
Anonymous Lauren Teo  1. At the start you have an ~66% chance of picking an empty door. Assuming you do (and the odds are on your side) the host is forced to pick the other empty door.
You should change; I don't know how to calculate the odds they're higher that the gold is behind the unpicked door.

2. I daren't answer this one as it all still seems so obvious, and must therefore not be. (Ooohh, it's just like QI.) 
Anonymous Alan Davies  The answer to question 2 is 50/50 
Anonymous Steven Fry  BONG! Ohohohoho so very wrong, Alan! Minus 50 points, I'm afraid.

Bo! 
Anonymous Anonymous  Hi,

If you really like puzzles, you might like this site -

http://perplexus.info/

If you have seen the american show, Numbers, (the math wiz with the FBI brother) you first problem was used in one of the shows. The second one I am not sure, but I think it is also 66% in favor of the other being a boy. Here is how I think of it.

If not knowing either child's gender ( and who really does...but I digress) the options are
girl - girl
girl - boy
boy - girl
boy - boy

and it is 3/4 or 75% chance of at least one boy. Once you say you know one is a girl, you take area the last option. With three options, two have a boy, or 66%.

Or I am missing something.

Anyway, have fun and check out that puzzle site.

Dawn 
Blogger Siobhan Curran  > "the options are girl - girl, girl - boy, boy - girl, boy - boy"

Sounds like my porn collection... 
Blogger jessica_sweet_tv  If answers go against common sense
then
Problem number one, I am too tired to think, plus if you made a choice why change??
Problem number two, well the second children might look like a girl in that pretty dress, but its actually a boy (oops, that wicked mind on me) 
Blogger Cathii Scott  There are lies, damned lies and statistics. Since these problems are both based around probablity, and probability IS statistics, then both answers are lies, no matter what they are.

First problem.... three choose one, then two choose one. Mathmatically the probablity is 1 divide by (3 x 2) that you choose the right door each time. However the reality is that you have 50/50 of chosing the right door the second time. (human factors not considered) there for the odds are far better to choose the unopened door.

Second problem.... Combination, there are four possible combinations or outcomes for 2 children assuming the binary model is selected (ie no transexual or intersexed children) as already pointed out above. One of the possible combinations is boy-boy and can be discounted. One of the remaining three options is girl-girl there for the odds are 2 in 3. 
Blogger Cathii Scott  Talking of answers to problems... what were the top 20 trannie movies of all time????? 
Blogger Becky  The dog ate it. :-S 
Blogger Jessica  I spent a long time on that first one and I still can't quite get my head around it, as for number 2, I'll go with 50/50 
Anonymous NH  Problem 1: If I'm on a game show that asks me to choose a door for a prize with a bearded host goading me, then I have forfeited the right to life and thus don't deserve the pot of gold.

Problem 2: I have two choices; either I mathematically work out the chances that the 2nd child is a boy, or I instead ask the couple what the gender of it is. I might not win any logic awards, but my social skills will improve. 
Anonymous Stephanie Delacey  Thank you, Cathii, for asking about the Top 20 tranny films! I've been dying to ask that myself - but I was afraid that Becky would snort derisively and point to a post about it back in April or something and I'd be left looking old and forgetful... 
Blogger Daisy  1- Either is door or the hosts door has the gold so it must be 50-50. Therefore he has not greater chance that either door has the gold, so it makes no difference to the odds.

2- The second child can either be a boy or a girl (unless we are counting Hermaphrodites. But as it's just a logic problem I'll asume not), so the odds are 50-50. 
Blogger Miss K  here are the answers:

1. Yes
2. No
3. Maybe or all of the above 
Blogger Miss K  Oh, and

4. South Carolina 
Blogger Becky  Well done, you win the speedboat. 
Anonymous Anonymous  Re juries not understanding statistics. There were several examples of deliberate attempts to mislead the jury with spurious probability arguments in the OJ Simpson case.

Simpson's defense lawyers argued:

1)That evidence that Simpson physically abused his wife be dismissed on the grounds that only 1 in a 1000 men who beat their wives also murder them.

2)The chance that a sample of DNA matched that of OJ Simpson was put at 1 in 4 000 000. Since there are 20 000 000 people in the Los Angeles area his lawyers argued it could not be conclusively proved that the DNA was his.

Neither argument, of course, is remotely convincing. 
Anonymous Stephanie Delacey  That was me, not Miss Anonymous. Now what are the chances of that happening? 
Blogger Miss K  Dunno, but I already won the speeboat. You can have the cuddly toy. 
Blogger Miss K  > speeboat

Must. Use. Preview. Button. Provided. 
Blogger VB-W  If I were the game show host, and you were the contestant, I'd offer you the option to switch only if you initially chose the correct door. In this case, the first door has a 100% chance of winning, the second door has a 0% chance, and switching would be a sure loser.

Unless you understand the motives and behavior of the game show host, all the mathematics in the world won't help you answer this question 
Anonymous Savannah Hemingway  1. It doesn't matter which door you choose. Each has a 50% chance of holding the gold.

2. Each child has a 50% chance of being a boy. The gender of the other has no effect on the odds. 
Blogger Kate Weston  A couple have five children - half of them are boys ...

1) You have a better chance of winning by changing your door for the reasons described by others above. If the host had said choose either door 1 or both doors 2 and 3 together you would have picked the 2 wouldnt you - that is what you are doing when you swap. (er i think).

2) Gut reaction says 50-50 since the odds of having any particular sex are even (disregarding the weight of x chromosome carrying sperm) but the G-G B-G G-B B-B argument seems good too - hmmm don't know. 
Anonymous Natalie  I'm sure it's all been covered already but it's 50/50 on both. Once one door is eliminated in the first question your odds raise to 50/50 regardless of your original pick. Same with the second one. The sex of the first child has no effect on the odds for the sex of the second and so it is still 50/50.

I see you've added the word verification again... 
Anonymous Genette  The answer to the first one is that you should swap, as you will lose in the one third of cases where you picked the correct door in the first place, but you will win in the two thirds of cases where you picked the wrong door to start with.
The answer to the second one is 50/50. GG, BG, GB, BB cover all the possibilities, and we know we can rule out BB. But we can also rule out either BG or GB. (We don't know which one, but the girl is either older, in which case we rule out BG, or younger ruling out GB.) That leaves us with GG and one of the GB/BG options and an equal chance that the other child is boy or girl. 

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Thursday, August 10, 2006

YouTube: Girl takes pic of herself every day for three years

Of course, if she'd have been a tranny she'd have posted every bloody one to Flickr.
Blogger VB-W  Why? Apart from a change of specs there's little difference. Now if she had plastic surgery in that time... 
Blogger Becky  Very litle difference? Watch the way her hair grows, and then changes style, or the subtle changes in the shape of her face. I think it's fascinating.

If there had been stark changes like plastic surgery, it wouldn't have worked as a time-lapse film. 
Blogger Siobhan Curran  I think that's bloody amazing 
Blogger hannaviolane  me to ! loved the speed the photos change to ( reminds me of making flicker books as a child) its great the way her expressions seem not to alter much as well....and the music is pretty cool to! 
Anonymous Natalie  I just had an excellent flash of inspiration. Once I get my hormones I could take a side shot of my chest like that every day and you could watch my breasts develop.... 
Blogger Charlee Brown  "this video has been removed due to copyright infringement" no fair :( 
Blogger Becky  Aw. :-( 
Blogger Becky  I've managed to track the same clip down on Atomfilms, the link should work again now. 

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Not quite over the counter culture

My brother said something insightful to me once. Actually, he'd probably argue that he's said several insightful things to me, but for the purposes of this blog entry I'm going to choose just one.

It was several years ago, I'd been out clubbing a couple of times as Becky and was really enjoying myself. We were sitting in a pub and I was enthusing about this whole new lifestyle of tranny clubs that I'd discovered.

He smiled, and said "you've found your counter culture."

He went on to talk about how he'd got mixed up in the drugs scene of the town where he'd lived in his early twenties. It was self-destructive, expensive, and ultimately lead him down some very nasty paths (from which he has since returned and is now flourishing, I'm pleased to add).

The thing was, he explained, that a big part of what had drawn him to, and kept him in, that scene was the sense of belonging to a group of people that weren't part of accepted society. Running underneath and at opposite directions to the social "norms", with people who were interesting, scary, weird and talented. It wasn't just a group of people who bought,sold and took lots of drugs, it was a whole rich social network of people who just so happened to also buy, sell and take lots of drugs.

My Bro had gained strength from that feeling of belonging, but not belonging to the mainstream. The feeling of "not being like everyone else", and that rang true for me too. I'd found my counter-culture, for the first time in my life, and I was loving it.

Maybe everyone has their own counter-culture. Their own way of feeling that they're not "fitting in", even if to everyone else's eyes they appear to be doing just that.

One of my favourite songwriters is Ben Folds, and one of my favourite songs by the Ben Folds Five is "Underground", which sort of sums up the feelings I got when I first discovered the tranny scene.

I was never cool in school
I'm sure you don't remember me
and now it's been ten years
I'm still wondering who to be
and I love to mix in circles,
cliques and social coteries,
that's me...
hand me my nosering
(can we be happy?)
show me the mosh pit
(can we be happy?)
we can be happy
underground


Okay, so trannies don't traditionally habituate the mosh pit or sport noserings (although it's not unknown), but in my mind that song is about the joy of being part of a counter-culture, something hidden "underground".

In some ways I've moved on from my tranny-club days, but I'm still part of the culture. The feeling of belonging is now spread thinly, like a weak glue connecting me invisibly to a huge social network of interesting, scary, weird and talented people.

And I like it like that.

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Anonymous Tidy  This makes a lot of sense to me - I've been through various counter-cultural types and ended up - ?? Exactly why I want to be going in the opposite direction to the mainstream is another question though to which I've never had an answer; but I do have a nose ring if that helps? 
Blogger Becky T  Another insightful post, Becky. :) It's funny, I too have had that urge to divert from the mainstream, for as long as I can remember. I belong with one social circle, a sort of big happy family whose members are in touch with each other partly through discussion forums and partly at events. Each of those members rides two wheels, and is automatically seen as somewhat non-mainstream. Within that there are further non-mainstream groups, of which I'm one.

And you know, it's fun! It's fun to get away from the similar look of people, the similar predicatable way people behave.

I wonder it might be as much "alternative interest" as wanting to be somewhere between a pioneer and - as Siobhan said - a sloppy second. Not so much anti-establishment as anti-identikit? And for the record, I have a nosestud too. 
Anonymous Isobel  I think that must make me a nihlist then. I suspect that I deliberately make sure that I don't fit in anywhere - you know, just to be on the safe side.

Does anyone remember Tony Hancock's The Rebel? 
Blogger Becky  "I suspect that I deliberately make sure that I don't fit in anywhere - you know, just to be on the safe side.

Does anyone remember Tony Hancock's The Rebel?"

No, just you Isobel.

Oh my God it's working! :-O

;-) 
Anonymous Isobel  I told you so ;o) 
Blogger sim  Well I enjoy my own counter culture.
Just me though.
Well, when I say enjoy, I mean tollerate. Barely tollerate.
Actually there's not much culture to speak of either.
OMG, Im a intollerable loaner on the outide of mainstream culture.
Wow thanks for makeing me think about this stuff Becky.

Im gonna go and have a little cry now. 
Anonymous Tiffany  In that case, maybe I'm part of a counterculture within a counterculture? 
Blogger Valerie S  Well, I'm all me too about not wanting to fit into predefined social roles.

But have you noticed that all counter-cultures have actually stricter rules of behaviour and are often less tolerant than mainstream, inside their own sphere. They usually define very strictly what it is exactly how you must rebel against the mainstream.

And I hate that. Were you thinking of that too, Isobel? 
Anonymous Anonymous  Hi,

Even early on, the urge to rebel is there in some people. My sixth grade teacher sign my year book

"To a determined non-conformist"

Peace,

Dawn 
Blogger Pandora Caitiff  Bah! Slackers.

I'm a roleplaying, goth tranny. Three counterculture stereotypes in one package!

Top that. 
Blogger Sandie Dee  Hah! I'll see your roleplaying Goth Tranny and raise you Scuba Diving, biking, Armed forces Tranny... and worse than even that (apparently) a 4x4 driver :-o
;-) 
Blogger Charlee Brown  I'll raise you both, gender bending, bisexual, biker, witch, fat-bird, motorclub member, transit driving, goth (sometimes), cake-making, karaoke queen :p 

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Wednesday, August 09, 2006

It's what we say instead of "hello"

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Blogger Miss K  ARF!!! 
Blogger jessica_sweet_tv_mx  So now Wicca has replaced Kabalah as the fashionable thing to be 
Anonymous Tiffany  Ha, that was like my whole 8th-grade year. Whatever that translates to in England. 
Anonymous Dana X  Wicca? Fashionable? Did I fall into a time warp and end up in 1996 again? 
Blogger Charlee Brown  ROFL!
When I was born, I was a witch, my grandma told me so.
When I was 12, I rebelled and went to church. When I was 13 they did the "gays are bad" sermon, and I walked out.
When I was 13, I re-donned my goth clothes, and called myself a witch again. I was happy.
When I was 18 someone told me I was Wiccan. I went along with that.
Last year I looked up what Wicca is really about. I'm not Wiccan. I'm pagan, but I'm still a witch, and happy with it. 
Blogger sim  I do like these.

Wicca chair, isnt that the head of the withes parish committee? 
Anonymous NH  My parents said to me when I was a child, "son, we've had to make a lot of sacrifices for you over the years", but then again, they are Wiccans. 

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Monday, August 07, 2006

Pronouncement

The free-and-almost-too-good-to-be-true Film Four, is currently showing a season of Studio Ghibli films.

Watch them. Just do it, okay? I promise you'll enjoy them.

And if you don't enjoy them I'll send round a Totoro to sit on you. You have been warned.
Blogger Siobhan Curran  PVR is set. Have I mention ed ho wfantastic my EyeTV is recently? 
Blogger Siobhan Curran  And can I type worse than that? Possibly? 
Blogger Becky  Heheheh, the scattergun approach to spacebar usage. :-) 
Anonymous NH  Is that Manga stuff? Big eyes, small mouth, unhealthy obsession with pre-teens and tentacle sex? 
Blogger Becky  Er, possibly tarring a whole country's animation output with one brush, NH? 
Anonymous Tiffany  And besides, Studio Ghibli's stuff has smaller eyes than most. :P 
Blogger Pandora Caitiff  Kiki's Delivery Service was rather good. Found Totoro a bit slow, but I'm looking foward to Porco Rosso (which is going to be bizarre if thats Keifer Sutherlands voice as our hero) 
Blogger Pandora Caitiff  Oops! Its NOT Keifer Sutherland. I've just been wtching way too much 24 and had him on the brain. It was a very short clip on the advert. 

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Becky EnVérité by Bridget Love


I love it when talented people make me things! :-)

Anonymous Tiffany  :O I want one... 
Blogger jadis  bridget did an awesome job!!!!!! 

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Sunday, August 06, 2006

Cardiff...


...is not nearly as interesting as you'd imagine if, for example, your entire prior knowledge of the place is based on watching Doctor Who.

There are a lot less gaseous aliens, and a lot more stag and hen parties. And the only thing vaguely resembling a planet-threatening Slitheen-designed power plant is an odd cooling tower shaped wooden chimney over the Welsh assembly. Although I assume this is mainly for funnelling hot air safely away from the politicians below.

Speaking of which, why do the Welsh have an "assembly"? What do they do there? I'm guessing visits from the nit nurse and talks by the local Chief Constable.

Before I get mugged by a dozen Welsh readers I'd better counter that with some England-bashing. Erm, the English are all rubbish at making cheese on toast. There, that should do it.

I'm not too sure about Cardiff, I went on a whim for no other reason that it was nearby and somewhere I'd never been before.

It seems like a place in transition. There are some admirable attempts to graft a modern city onto it's old industrial bones, with varying levels of success. The waterfront, for example, is aching to be a South Bank, but currently feels more like a Southend. Trendy wine bars seem to be fighting a battle with chip shops and vendors of tatt.

Maybe I'll go back in a few years time and see who won.

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Anonymous Steph Angel  "Trendy wine bars seem to be fighting a battle with chip shops and vendors of tatt."

Funny, that's exactly what it was like about 6 years ago when I last went... Sounds like a mighty slow refurb :-o 
Blogger Connie Cox  but currently feels more like a Southend

What do they have a mile long bonfire too? ;-)

So you didn't spot any police boxes recharging? 
Anonymous Anonymous  A few miles further on you get treated to the delights of Port Talbot...at night it's a cross between Canvey Island and the opening scenes in "Blade Runner".

Further along from that, you get Swansea which we won't dwell too much on but just outside of that you get to the great named town of The Mumbles...a place which is a colony for English people. Imagine how that place was named:

"Oh, I say old chap, what is this place called?...I think it's jolly spiffy and me and the wife would like to purchase a house here."

"Llandfillapwyllignygnny haballaba fnord ichtyddyd."

"Whatever...let's call it The Mumbles instead". 
Blogger Jessica  Me and Soph were only about 30 miles away from Cardiff 
Blogger Jane  Oooh where Jess? Mind you considering some of the roads it could have been hours away. 
Blogger Daisy  Wish I'd know you were in town as we don't get many celebrities down here. I live in Cardiff, before that I lived in Swansea and reading your entry it was starting to get my dander-up (please insert you own joke here…). But then I realised I'm a Yorkshire Lass really, so that was alright. What can I say about Port Talbot, at night it is beautiful in an industrial sort of way but in the cold light of the day it is horrifying to the environmentalist in me. As for Dr Who, I do keep running into film crews for Touch Wood. Lastly, Cardiff (sorry lived here a while now so I’ve got to) is really beautiful if you know where to look. 
Blogger Daisy  My last message was sponsored by the Welsh Tourist board. 
Blogger Becky  I think I needed a guide Daisy!

I hope my email didn't write off Cardiff as a tourist destination. I know that there must be some great places to see if you know where to look, it's just that in a weekend break you don't really get the time to explore a place.

And judging by the huge number of stag and hen parties I saw, Cardiff's doing OK for pulling in the tourist pound. :-) 
Blogger Daisy  I don't know if it still is but Wales used to have the number 2 destination in the World (behind Vegas) for Hen and Stag nights, yes you guessed it Tenby. Don’t worry Bex I was only teasing, Cardiff is like most cities, very easy to miss the good bits. One more Wales / Cardiff fact, the first 1 million pound cheque was written down the bay in Cardiff (in the Coal Exchange – which is now a really good venue to see bands). Anyway enough of Cardiff and more talk of shiney things. 

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Friday, August 04, 2006

Ickle. Shiny. Gadgety. Me want.

Oooh, look at this!

I've been debating getting a digital terrestrial receiver for a while now, particularly after my problems with Sky, and the fact that Sky's free digital service doesn't include great channels like More 4 and FilmFour. But I wanted something that would replace the recording facility that Sky+ gives me.

That internationally feted TVAG*, Siobhan, has been raving about her EyeTV kit for a while now (which allows you to record directly to a hard drive), and now Elgato have shrunk the whole thing down to something that will slot in the side of my laptop, I'm really tempted. A whole set-top box fitted into something the size of a USB pen? And painted silver? What's not to like?

In fact the only hurdle left is the cost. So I've decided to make beckysweb.co.uk a pay site.

Retrospectively. You all owe me a tenner.

*Transvestite Apple Guru
Blogger Siobhan Curran  Cheque's in the post...

(I'm also a Second Life Apple Guru, which makes me, um...) 
Anonymous Mrs Y.  Doesn't sound bad for £30! 
Blogger Joanna  I bought a Hauppage one for my PC a few weeks ago. Very cute, but I need to sort out my aerial if I want to use it with digital terrestrial since the signal is awful down here.

Works great with the feed from my Sky box though. 
Blogger Becky  Ooops, made the mistake of blogging during a 10-minute break, and didn't realise I'd posted a link to a page that would expire. Fixed now. 
Blogger Daisy  Although with your Sky+ you can now use your shiny Mobile to phone in which program you want recorded. 
Anonymous Tiffany  Um....how much is that in dollars? 
Blogger Stegbeetle  OK, here you are. £10 in kosher marmalade. 

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Thursday, August 03, 2006

Bristol rover

Hello! Having great fun down here in Bristol, in and around a 3-day IT course. If there's anything you want to know about the Clifton Suspension Bridge, or Novell Zenworks, then I'm yer tranny (I mention Novell Zenworks in the vain hope that maybe some reader has just gone "f*ck me I'm sitting next to that Becky EnVérité on my training course!") ;-)

Expect pictures when I get back. Of Bristol and stuff, not the course. That would be boring. Yes, more boring than the bridge, before you say it.
Anonymous Anonymous  How odd. I have a training course in Yate next month. Near Bristol. Is the bridge worth a view? 
Anonymous Anonymous  I might be on the same course - do you keep coughing and scratching all the time? Big NHS glasses? 
Blogger Susan  No I'm not sat next to you on the course, but in a parallel universe I might have been, and that would be so cool! :-) 
Blogger hannaviolane  and stop fiddling with your nails becky ive already noticed how shiny they are and longer than normal....is that 'envy'i can smell on you, isnt hat a girls perfume?? 
Blogger Connie Cox  Oh no you arent an NHS site on Novell are you? ;-) 

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