The Five Versions of Becky

Becky is, to a large extent, a digital entity. In reality at the moment I only answer to the name "Becky" about one night in a sixty, but virtual Becky exists all the time.

24/7 you can see her pictures, or browse her web site, or send her an email. This Becky (I'm tempted to call her something like CyberBecky to avoid confusion with the real flesh-and-blood Becky, but let's just make it clear that from now on when I'm talking about Becky I'm talking about the virtual version of me) is like my Electric Monk.

Douglas Adams invented the Monk in his book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency as a labour-saving device for a technologically advanced society. In this society they had devices to do every tedious task, from VCRs to watch tedious television for them, to the Monk to believe in things for them. The Monk believed in things so people didn't have to. In the book he went wrong, and started to believe in all kinds of things. It's a great read, but I digress.

Virtual Becky cross-dresses so that I don't have to. I get some of the caché of being an active full-time transvestite without the tedious daily shaving, making up and dressing bit.

There have been several versions of Virtual Becky, as my transvestism has changed, and technology and my relationship to it has evolved.

Becky 0.1 Alpha

This was pre-release, and actually pre-internet. This early version of Becky was the subject of stories, basic tranny fantasies, written furtively on MacWrite and stored on a carefully hidden floppy disks.

You think that's weird? This first version of Virtual Becky was weird. Over time as Becky became more "real", Virtual Becky became less weird. But here, right back at the beginning, Becky was a very private, very odd, thing.

Actually, it was actually a bit weirder than that...

I found this little program that wrote random sentences, based on fairly complex grammatical rules. I re-wrote this program to make up random tranny fantasies with Becky as the subject. Because then it wasn't me making me dress up, it was the computer telling me to, do you see? Do you see? I'm not a transvestite... it's the computer making me do it!

Er... yeah... pretty weird, now I think about it.

Becky 0.5 Beta

Fast-forward quite a few years and I've discovered the Internet. At first I'm happy to treat it as a read-only medium, voraciously hunting down the tranny fiction that other people had posted. I remember looking at tranny sites a bit like this one and thinking it was all very interesting but it wasn't really for me. Because I wasn't like those transvestites who went out and did stuff, it all existed in my head and that's where I was happy to keep it.

I still had the creative urge to create "tranny interest" stuff, and I started to make "captioned images" with Photoshop. They followed quite a simple theme, a picture of a real girl with a caption that suggested she was actually a boy. Actually "caption" isn't really the right word, they were little stories. Some of them even had plots! ... Well maybe not plots as such, but definitely a form of narrative.

But yeah, still deeply weird.

The difference this time was I was sharing them with other people. I set up a little group on Lycos (remember when Lycos had groups?) to publish the captioned images to. It was quite a popular little group (by the standards of these things), and for the first time there were people who "knew" me as Becky, albeit only as an online persona.

Joanna knows me from back then. She's probably got a few captions of mine from back then that could really embarrass me if they ever saw the light of day... but we have enough dirt on each other to ensure mutual distruction!

After a while I started to get to know via chat some of the people who were reading my captions, and struck up online friendships.

One of the people I got chatting to was a guy called Jay, whose went by the femme name of Jade and the online name of Jaded. Jaded because he'd done the whole "out every night" tranny thing and got tired of the whole scene.

One day I really must write properly about Jay. He was instrumental in helping me find a proper place for Becky in my life, and I owe him a lot. Unfortunately he died suddenly of a heart attack a few years back, just as I was getting on to the tranny scene, and I never got to meet Jade en-femme.

Becky 0.9 (Release Candidate A)
Through the gentle encouragement of Jay, I was eventually persuaded to go on my first ever "proper" tranny shopping trip. Within a day I'd made my second trip to Transformation (the first was back in the Becky 0.1 days and involved a hideous velour maid's outfit) and bought a set of nasty silicon boobs and an M&S bra to keep them in.

Becky still wasn't out. But she was making tentative steps in that direction. I'd joined the Angels Yahoo group and had started talking properly about my transvestism. This was a major step. Up until now Becky had been just a fantasy, a mental construct who formed the subject of silly stories revolving around being made to dress up. For the first time I was admitting that I wanted to dress up, and that was a real watershed.

Becky 1.0
Within months I'd made my first outing, and within days of that outing I'd bought the beckysweb domain and set up this site. It was basically just a place to show off my coveted first makeover pictures, but I put a little thought into the design (I went for the "deliberately crap" look... it's served me well ever since) and I was quite happy with the result.

Thanks to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, you can get an idea of what my site used to look like all those years ago. Some of the pictures are broken, but it still kinda works.

Version 1 of Virtual Becky lasted quite a while, with just minor increment upgrades. I kept going out, and I kept posting pictures. Each new set of pictures had a bit of a background story to accompany them, but I didn't really say much about me, I wasn't happy revealing too much about Simon, or what I really thought about stuff.

I also started sticking other stuff on the site, the tranny licence dates from about Becky 1.2.

Becky 2.0

The latest, and current, version of Becky was brought about by sticking a blog onto the site, and then realising I actually had to write stuff to fill it. Suddenly I realised that to have a blog that was anything more than "what club Becky went to this week" I'd need to write about me, and that meant writing about Simon as well as Becky, and re-incorporating Simon and Becky into one entity.

Thus Virtual Becky completed a arc, starting as a very private thing in my head, moving out onto the web, then further out into the real world and finally home again. Now she's in my head and "out there".

It seems to be working like this.

But I feel vague twinges, like things are going to change. I wonder what Becky 3.0 will be like.

...

I kinda wrote this in the hope that other people might be able to relate... maybe not to the weirder bits, but in general. Have you gone through your own "ages" online?

Bring back nostalgia

A thought... now that Neighbours has been bought by Channel 5, what will replace it in the coveted BBC1 teatime-just-before-the-news slot?

I'm hoping they take the opportunity to bring back a classic... Willow the Wisp! Paddington! Ivor the Engine! The Clangers!

BBC4's current season on the history of children's television is pure unadulterated nostalgia. There was a fascinating programme on Peter Firmin tonight, which reminded me of his excellent autobiography Seeing Things, which I read a few years ago. Peter is one of my heroes, a true genius of television (and I'm not just limiting that to "children's television"). There's something about his whimsical imagination and endless invention coupled with a peculiarly British make-do-and-mend creative method. Even now when I hear his gentle voice I'm transported back to my childhood, prostrate on the rug in front of the goggle box.

I wonder if I did actually grow up in a golden age of British kids TV, or whether every generation thinks they do?

This morning I are mainly knackered

Blergh... it might not look it on the map, but Britain is big. Traveling any distance across it is a tiring process.

The main purpose of the trip was a party at Jessica's to celebrate her quarter-century, which was great fun. Look, I dressed!



Yeah, I know it's not that good a picture, but it was the best of a bad bunch and, as Siobhan points out, I'm bound by The Law. If we don't post pictorial proof that we've dressed in public within 48 hours, according to Transvestite Law it never actually happened, and these big black flying monsters turn up to erase the event from history. True! My hands are tied.

Oh, and guess who we went to see on Sunday! Only one of the icons of the UK tranniesphere, that's who! She might seem to disappear occasionally, and she's getting a little long in the tooth, but she's still one of Lancaster's finest. I'm talking of course about, Erin. Well, we were kind of in the neighbourhood, seemed rude not to. She's looking well. Oh, and Siobhan was there too. Which was nice. :-)

"Just one more thing"...

... as well as being the inevitable title of Peter Falk's autobiography, tends to be my attitude when I get the blog-template-fiddling bug.

You can now subscribe by email to this blog, by putting your email addy in the little box in the right column and hitting "go". So now Becky's T-Blog will get to you (in some form) even if you're stuck behind a po-faced work firewall! :-)

I promise to stop fiddling now.

Yeah, right... as if... I'll keep fiddling like Columbo keeps badgering amoral English (the evilest ones are always English) wine connoisseurs until they finally snap and admit they bludgeoned their missus to death with an ice sculpture.

The Great Leap Forward

Well, not quite. I've just finished giving the blog a bit of a minor revamp. Thanks to a handy hint from Jessica the new feed is now in place quicker than I thought, and with one or two new nifty features added.

I've also made some little changes here and there to the actual blog pages, hope you like them!

I'm moving, make sure you don't lose touch

Moving house is said to be among the most stressful things that you can do. Based on recent research, I think the nearest equivalent in blogging is probably moving XML feeds.

To cut a long story short I want to move all my blog subscribers on various feeds to single Feedburner feed. There are things I will do in the background that might make this painless and transparent to you, but to be absolutely sure you're subscribed to the definitive never-to-be-deleted feed of Becky's T-Blog, make sure you're using the link below:

The New Feed

And to make it even easier, here are some buttons to help you subscribe via some of the popular readers:

Please make the switch, I'm paranoid about losing you! :-/

Blogroll 3.0

I've been exercising my more-or-less atrophied web programming muscles. Take a gander at the new-look blogroll running down the left side of the main blog page.

Not only do the most-recently-active bloggers appear first in the list, you can now see what they've blogged about too.

What's more, you can even subscribe to a feed of my blogroll, should you so desire. Actually, if you've not toyed with feed readers, this feed might be a good one to get you going. It's like a sumptuous taster menu of blogging, all in one place.

Whatevah, I'm pretty chuffed with it. :-)

Look 4 Maddie ¡Please!

I saw this during my walk home yesterday, scrawled on a bus stop. It made me realise just how pervasive this story has become in the UK. It also struck me as interesting that they used the Spanish-style inverted exclamation mark to emphasize the "please!". It made me wonder who the writer was, who they expected to read it, and what they'd hoped to achieve. Maybe this made them feel like they were doing something to help a situation entirely out of their hands.

It also makes me wonder how much longer the story of this little blonde girl can stay in the news. Every day seems to bring a new lead, often barely newsworthy but hungrily seized apon by the British media. Today it was reported that the Portuguese police are going to start using face recognition technology to scan holiday snaps taken at the resort at the time around the kidnapping. Worthwhile, possibly, but it's starting to sound increasingly like they're clutching at straws.

On a lighter note, did anyone else see Paul Merton in China last night? It featured the ingenious Mr Wu, a Chinese farmer who makes robots out of rubbish. Each one named after their creator, and each one wonderfully idiosyncratic. The moment where the giant silver robot appeared - solemnly pulling a rickshaw past the window of the room where Paul was chatting to Mr Wu's long-suffering wife - was the most magical thing I've seen on television in ages.

I found a video of the robot on Youtube last night, which doesn't quite give you the full experience, but will give you an idea...

A regime of clinically-controlled shrubs

Crazed plea

Why, for the love of God, why, is it the case that if you type "Plastic Canvas Eeore" into Google Image Search, do you get so many pictures of me?

What does it mean? Wibble.

Uncharacteristically organised

When, earlier in the week, I finally decided I was going to try to get to this year's Sparkle, I was pretty sure I'd left it too late to get a decent (and more importantly cheap) hotel room.

But in a real stroke of luck, a chance encounter with a dodgy geezer (I think he might have been an admirer - he had a really made-up sounding name) in the Angels chatroom has landed me with a reservation for one of the hotels on the doorstep of Canal Street.

Result! Thanks a million dodgy geezer! (Okay, maybe you're not too dodgy) ;-).

So yes, I'll be at Sparkle. And, in a break with tradition dating back to the pre-Sparkle Transmission Birthday Party days, I'll be arriving on the Friday!

To celebrate, lets all sing the Cat Macros song! :-)

By the way, Isobel's bravely agreed to ride shotgun with me and Jane. So that's one definite... who else is going?

Please insert disk 2 of 14

TROUSERFALL
EnVerite interactive transgendered fiction
Copyright (C) 2007 by Becky Enverite. All rights reserved.
Release 1 / Serial Number 0001

CHAPTER TWO

Bar
You are in the bar area of the tranny club. The bar is to the north, behind which is a barman serving drinks. There is a seating area to the west, and a dance floor to the east. The exit is to the south.

The Goth Tranny says "I've just seen a friend. Have a nice night!"

The Goth Tranny heads eastward and disappears into the crowd.

>BUY DRINK
The Barman starts to pour you a glass of wine and says "that will be £3 please love".

>GIVE MONEY TO BARMAN
You don't have that.

>INVENTORY
You have:
 no wine
 an unsuitable top (worn)
 an unsuitable skirt (worn)
 unsuitable shoes (worn)
 an infeasible amount of make-up (worn)
 a wig (worn)
 an unfamiliar and strangely bumpy black handbag

>EXAMINE HANDBAG
A cursory examination of the handbag reveals it's certainly not yours, you probably accidently picked up the Goth Tranny's handbag.

>OPEN HANDBAG
Opening the goth handbag reveals a hairbrush, an eyeliner, a dark lipstick, goth handbag fluff, and some money.

>GIVE MONEY TO BARMAN
What the hell, you can always pay her back later. You give £3 of the Goth Tranny's money to the barman and he hands you a glass of wine.

>DRINK WINE
You drink the glass of wine. It's almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
A Trollish Tranny enters from the south. She immediately spots you and comes over.
"Hello! I thought you said you'd moved to an oil rig!"

>GO WEST
Seating Area
This is a large seating area containing several tables. Large crowds of trannies and other types are here. There is a door to the north. There is a bar area to the east.
The sole piece of decoration is a balloon, tied to a weight on one of the tables.
Sitting at one of the tables is a Dwarfish Tranny.
Standing chatting to a group of friends is what appears to be either a Very Pretty Tranny or a Very Pretty Real Girl.

>EXAMINE VERY PRETTY TRANNY
I'm not sure if it IS a tranny!

>EXAMINE VERY PRETTY REAL GRIL
I'm not sure if it IS a Real Girl! All I know is, it's a person!

>EXAMINE VERY PRETTY PERSON
She is beautiful. Just from looks you can't work out for certain if she's really a boy or not. You get the sudden urge to go over and chat to her.

The Trollish Tranny enters from the east.
"Oh this is where you went! This bar furniture kind of reminds me of the passenger lounge at Stevenage station. Before the 1997 refurbishment, of course."

The Very Pretty Person seems to shudder at the sound of the Trollish Tranny's voice and immediately heads east.

>GO EAST
The Trollish Tranny follows you.

Bar Area
The Very Pretty Person is here.
The Very Pretty Person sees the Trollish Tranny and heads east.

The Trollish Tranny says "Seems quiet tonight. I wonder if everyone's been held up by the roadworks on the A1492. It's only blocked northbound, but of course that has a knock-effect on the A1495, and then... heheh... it's basically every man for himself all the way down to the B14821!"

>SAY "GOODBYE" TO THE TROLLISH TRANNY
The Trollish Tranny doesn't seem to understand that.

The Dwarfish Tranny enters from the West.

>SAY "GO AWAY" TO THE TROLLISH TRANNY
The Trollish Tranny doesn't seem to understand that.

The Dwarfish Tranny sits down and sings about gold.

>GO EAST
The Trollish Tranny follows you.

Dance Floor
Disco lights play off shadowy bodies. Everyone is dancing. There is a bar to the west.

The Very Pretty Person skirts past you and your friend and heads west.

There is a DJ here, playing a song by the Pet Shop Boys.

>GO WEST
No, actually I think it's "Suburbia".

>GO WEST
Oh I see what you mean, sorry. You go west. The Trollish Tranny follows you.

Bar Area
The Very Pretty Person is here.
The Very Pretty Person sees the Trollish Tranny and heads east.

The Trollish Tranny says "Did I ever tell you about my model aeroplane collection?"

>GO WEST
The Trollish Tranny follows you.

Seating Area
The Dwarfish Tranny is here.
The Trollish Tranny says "What's your favourite type of traction engine?"

>LOOK
Seating Area
This is a large seating area containing several tables. Large crowds of trannies and other types are here. There is a door to the north. There is a bar area to the east.
The sole piece of decoration is a balloon, tied to a weight on one of the tables.
Sitting at one of the tables is a Dwarfish Tranny.

>TAKE BALLOON
You untie the balloon from it's weight and take it.

>EXAMINE BALLOON
It's just a balloon. It's kinda pink.

>GO NORTH
The Trollish Tranny follows you.

Corridor
This area seems to have been used by some trannies to get changed. Discarded items of male clothing are piled along the walls. There is a door to the north marked "Gents". There is a door to the east marked "Ladies". There is a door to the west marked "Other".
There is a discarded wig here.
There is a pair of glasses here.
There is a ring here.
There is a Giant Tranny here, standing by the door to the west.

>TAKE ALL
You take the wig. It's a strawberry blonde one, completely unlike the deep copper one you're wearing.

You take the pair of glasses. They're Dame Edna style. The Trollish Tranny Says "Ooooh! They look fun!"

You take the ring.

>WEAR RING
Nothing happens. It's not that kind of game. Dumbass.

>EXAMINE GLASSES
They're quite elaborate and girly.

The Trollish Tranny says "Oooh, they look a lot better than these old NHS things. But I need a very strong prescription."

>GIVE GLASSES TO TROLLISH TRANNY
The Trollish Tranny takes off her NHS glasses puts on the Dame Edna ones.

"How do I look?"

>SAY "FANTASTIC" TO TROLLISH TRANNY
"Really? Cool. Can't see a bloody thing though. You're a blur! I only know it's you from your ginger hair!"

>GO EAST
The Trollish Tranny says "I'd better not follow you into the loos! People will talk!"

You stride confidently into the Ladies' Toilets, quietly proud of your flagrant disregard of the taboos of society. You're a tranny risk-taker! A TG trailblazer! A gender pioneer!!

Ladies Loos
There are 20 other trannies here.

>INVENTORY
Before you can do anything another tranny pushes past and you get jostled back into the corridor.

Corridor
The Trollish Tranny is here.

The Trollish Tranny says "Couldn't go? I'm like that when in company!"

>GO NORTH
The door to the north is locked.

The Trollish Tranny says "You don't want to use the men's toilets anyway. We're LADIES!"

>GO WEST
You go to enter the door marked "Other" but the Giant Tranny blocks your path.

"Dis toilet are specially reser-ved for intersex people only," she says. "You can only en-ter if you haf an..."

She reads from a piece of paper.

"Uni... que chromo... sone combination"

>SAY "I AM INTERSEX" TO GIANT TRANNY
"Oh yeah? Wot's your chromosomes den?"

>SAY "XY" TO GIANT TRANNY
The Giant Tranny laughs. "Dat not unique! I hav dat!"

>SAY "XXY" TO GIANT TRANNY
The Giant Tranny shrugs. "Don't sound dat unique to me!"

>SAY "XYZZY" TO GIANT TRANNY
The Giant Tranny gasps. "Wow! Dat is unique!"

The Giant Tranny disappears.

>GO WEST
The Trollish Tranny says "I'd better not follow you into the loos! People will talk!"

Intersex Loo
It looks like pretty much any loo you've seen before. There is a door to the east.

>INVENTORY
You have:
 no wine
 an unsuitable top (worn)
 an unsuitable skirt (worn)
 unsuitable shoes (worn)
 an infeasible amount of make-up (worn)
 a copper wig (worn)
 a ring (worn)
 a pink balloon
 a blonde wig
 a goth handbag
 a hairbrush
 an eyeliner
 a dark lipstick
 goth handbag fluff
 some money

>REMOVE WIG
You remove your wig. It's a bit sweaty.

>PUT WIG ON BALLOON
You place the wig on the balloon. It bobs a bit lower, but remarkably stays afloat.

>DRAW FACE ON BALLOON
Using the eyeliner and lipstick, and your l33t makeup skillz, you draw a face on the balloon.

>EXAMINE BALLOON
It has a copper wig plonked on the top and a face drawn on it. It kind of vaguely slightly sort-of looks like you.

>GO EAST
What, step out in company without a wig on? No way!

>WEAR BLONDE WIG
You put on the blonde wig. Hopefully you'll have more fun now.

>GO EAST
Corridor
The Trollish Tranny is here.
The Trollish Tranny says to the balloon "You were ages! Bladder problems?"

>DROP BALLOON
Weighed down by the wig, the balloon drifts slowly floorwards.
The Trollish Tranny says "That's it! No more Bacardi Breezers for you, missy!"

>GO SOUTH
You go south. The Trollish Tranny stays talking to the balloon.

Seating Area
The Very Pretty Person is here.

The Very Pretty Person seems to be coming over to talk to you.

>SAVE

Do you want overwrite your existing save (Yes/No)?

That's actually the end... basically because I've run out of horrendously geeky text adventure in-jokes. :-)

But lets have a little competition, if you grew up with the same kinds of electronic entertainment as me, how many references can you spot?

The terrifying thing is I think I might be becoming a "spokesperson"

It's one of the great contradictions of modern gadgets that we're never really happy with them until they can emulate much older technology. So we're not really ready to adopt new-fangled PDA smart-phones until someone manages to squeeze a QWERTY keyboard onto them, despite the fact that QWERTY keyboards are a technology that would have been familiar to Fred Flintstone (except his one was made probably from the teeth of a live brontosaurus who shat out the hard-copy when you hit the "CTRL" and "P" tooth at the same time... or something).

It's the same with reading things electronically. We pretend to be happy with our web pages and our e-books, but we all secretly wish it was all a bit more flappy and papery, stitched along one end, and had that New Book Smell when you first opened it.

Fact: Computer manuals of the mid-eighties had the best New Book Smell ever. I was addicted to it, and secretly blame it for kick-starting my early obsession with computing.

But I digress.

People have been trying to emulate the feel of books and magazines in an electronic form for ages, with varying degrees of success. Zinio and it's associated reader software is one fairly successful system. It basically sets out to emulate in purely electronic form the whole magazine experience, allowing you to subscribe to magazines a little like you'd subscribe to a podcast, and download them when they become available.

The downloadable magazines are pretty much identical to the kind you'd get off the shelf in the newsagents, and there are in fact quite a few well-known titles available via Zinio, such as MacWorld and HELLO! magazine. The screen reader even gives you a satisfyingly flappy page-turn animation. They've not managed the New Book Smell yet, unfortunately!

Why have I been playing around with it? Well, er, cos I've been quoted in one of the magazines published purely via Zinio: Avantoure. They wrote to let me know, no doubt expecting me to publicise it my blog like the mug I am.



Ah, the blogger's ultimate accolade... to have their words lifted from the electronic page and be published... er... in a different kind of electronic page.

The article is all about drag, and cross-dressing in general. You can download the whole magazine for free here if you want to, it's a bloody good read. And I'm not just saying that as self-aggrandisement, I'm not in it that much. ;-)

In fact if you don't want to go to the bother of signing up for Zinio, and your eyesight isn't good enough to read the text in the above screen-shot, you can read my tiny contribution to the article by Amy Wolf below...



Hang on a second! "Not entirely sound science"?? How dare she! I'll have you know I have a degree in transpalaeontology from the University of Snettisham!

Herstory

I know it's already been discovered by some of my readers, but I think a new-ish TG blog called herstory deserves a bit of extra exposure. The author, Emma, has some interesting things to say, and her art is exceptional too.

If my Swiss-cheese memory is correct, she was born in the US but now lives in Australia. And, is it just me, or does she bear a spooky resemblance to another antipodean tranny?

2007 Eurovision Simulblogcast

It's begun! Stay tuned to Beckysweb for blow-by-blow commentary!

Oh God Becky, not this again!

Yep my personal one-tranny crusade: tranny fakers on Flickr!

And like Howard Beale in Network, I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this any more! It's time to start naming and shaming.

Take a look at this pics, from someone who recently added pictures to one of my Flickr groups.



Wow, foxy! That's one lucky tranny, that body looks too good to be true.

Which, in Flickr's tranny circles, usually means it is too good to be true.

Take a look at the face, especially in the large version, it's obviously been photoshopped in afterwards. The rest of her stream is also heavily photoshopped, some more successfully than others.

It's even more galling when you see the long list of fawning comments she gets on each picture. Comments from people like [looks down the list]... oh Karol shame on you! ;-)

It is written...

...that whenever two or more tranny bloggers are gathered in the same place, there shall be eating of Chinese food.

Well, perhaps it's just a coincidence that the two times I've met Isobel have involved a Chinese. The first time was at Transpocalypse last year, way over in Liverpool. Which is kinda weird because we actually live just down the road from each other.

So it was great to meet [    ]* and [    ]* partner again a bit closer to home, and in considerably less rushed circumstances, when Jane and I were invited over for a meal yesterday. Nice time, the home-cooked Chinese was very delicious too.

Actually this has been a bit of a month for mini-blogmeets. Last week I bumped into fellow King's Lynn blogger (non-tranny, in case there's any confusion) Stegbeetle for the first time. Always good to put faces to names!

*Insert your pronouns of choice here. I gave up trying to make this sentence work both accurately and aesthetically. Because, strictly speaking, we didn't meet Isobel again last night, we met her male counterpart. I still find writing about this stuff without breaking my own perceived "tranny etiquette" a bit of a minefield sometimes.

Transformed

I've been playing around with The St. Andrews University Perception Laboratory's Face Transformer, which takes an uploaded image of your face and applies various distortions to make it mimic different facial types.

It's not entirely successful, the results look a little freaky, but kinda fun.

Clockwise from top left: Original, Child (or as I like to call it "Bride of Chucky"), Older, Afro-Caribbean.

The best games don't need pictures

TROUSERFALL
EnVerite interactive transgendered fiction
Copyright (C) 2007 by Becky Enverite. All rights reserved.
Release 1 / Serial Number 0001

Hotel Room
You are in a hotel room. Every flat surface is covered with clothes, makeup and miscellaneous detritus. On one wall is hung a mirror, above a dresser with two drawers. There is an exit to the south, and a door to the bathroom to the west.
There is a bottle of wine here.
There is some more make-up here.

>INVENTORY
You have:
a handbag
an unsuitable skirt (worn)
an unsuitable top (worn)
unsuitable shoes (worn)
an infeasible amount of make-up (worn)
a wig (worn)

>GO SOUTH
You're not leaving the room looking like this. Have you seen yourself?

>LOOK IN MIRROR
You look awful. Your make-up is terrible. You look like a man in a wig.

>TAKE MORE MAKEUP
You now have the extra make-up.

>WEAR MAKEUP
You are already wearing that.

>WEAR MORE MAKEUP
You really think wearing MORE make-up is going to help?

>TAKE WINE
You now have the bottle of wine.

>DRINK WINE
You drink some wine. Everything seems a little better.

>LOOK IN MIRROR
You look fairly bad. Your make-up needs a lot of work. You look like an ugly woman in a wig.

>DRINK WINE
You drink some wine. Everything seems a little better.

>LOOK IN MIRROR
You look kinda OK. Your make-up isn't that bad. You look like a woman wearing too much make-up.

>SAVE
Save game successful.

>DRINK WINE
You drink some wine. Everything seems a little better.

>LOOK IN MIRROR
You look fabulous! Your make-up is just right, not too much, not too little. You look like a damn sexy woman.

>DRINK WINE
You drink some more wine. You fall over and pass out.

Game Over.

Would you like to start over, restore a saved game, or quit?
(Type RESTART, RESTORE or QUIT): > RESTORE

Hotel Room
You are in a hotel room. Every flat surface is covered with clothes, make-up and miscellaneous detritus. On one wall is hung a mirror, above a dresser with two drawers. There is an exit to the south, and a door to the bathroom to the west.

>GO SOUTH
You still feel that you're not suitable to be out in public.

>DRINK WINE
You drink some wine. Everything seems a little better.

>GO SOUTH
Are you sure you want to go out carrying an armful of make-up?

>DROP MAKEUP
You drop the make-up on the floor. You can sort that out in the morning.

>DROP WINE
You go to drop the wine but your hand doesn't seem to want to unclasp from it. You decide to hang on to it for the time being.

>GO SOUTH
Emboldened by just enough alcohol, you storm out of the door. The door closes behind you with a "click".

Hotel Corridor
The corridor continues to the east. There is a door to the north marked "room 404". There is a door to the south marked "room 403".

>GO NORTH
The door is locked. Shit. I hope you remembered to pick up your room key!

>OPEN HANDBAG
Opening your handbag reveals a camera, even more make-up, handbag fluff, some money, and a hotel room keycard (thank f*ck for that).

>CLOSE HANDBAG
You close the handbag.

>GO EAST
Hotel Corridor
The corridor continues to the east and west. There is a door to the north marked "room 402". There is a door to the south marked "room 401".

>GO EAST
Elevator Lobby
You are in the elevator lobby. There are corridors to the east and west. There is an elevator door to the south. Next to the door is a button.

>PRESS BUTTON
You press the button. It lights up. The electronic sign above the door indicates that an elevator is descending from above.

>WAIT
You wait. The elevator is getting closer.

>WAIT
You wait. The elevator is getting closer.

>WAIT
You wait. The elevator arrives and the door opens. A disembodied voice says "Fourth Floor".

>GO SOUTH
Elevator
You are in an elevator. The door to the north is open.
A Bemused Elderly American Couple are here, staring straight forward.

>SAY "HELLO" TO THE YANKS
I can't see any the yanks here.

>OOPS COUPLE
You say hello to the Bemused Elderly American Couple. They don't seem to hear you.

>SAY "GOING DOWN?" TO COUPLE
You say "going down?" in what you think is an amusingly suggestive manner to the Bemused Elderly American Couple. The wife faints.

The door of the elevator closes, and you feel it start to descend.

>LOOK
Elevator
You are in an elevator. The door to the north is closed. A Bemused Elderly American Couple are here. The husband is fanning the wife with a map of London.

>GIVE WINE TO COUPLE
You offer the nearly empty bottle of wine to the Bemused Elderly American Couple.

The Bemused Elderly American Couple don't appear to want that.

>WAIT
The wife of the Bemused Elderly American Couple appears to be coming round.

>WAIT
The elevator stops. The door opens. A disembodied voice says "Second Floor".

An Amazingly Tall Goth Tranny enters from the North.

The wife of the Bemused Elderly American Couple faints again.

>SAY "HELLO" TO GOTH TRANNY
You say "hello" to the Amazingly Tall Goth Tranny. She grins warmly and shows a stunning number of teeth framed by black lipstick. You unaccountably feel better about the world.

The door of the elevator closes, and you feel it start to descend.

>GIVE WINE TO GOTH TRANNY
The Amazingly Tall Goth Tranny takes the bottle of wine, downs it's remaining contents, and drops the empty bottle in the corner of the elevator.

"Thanks, are you off to the club?"

>REPLY "YES"
"Cool, do you need a lift?"

>REPLY "YES"
You reach the lobby and follow The Amazingly Tall Goth Tranny to her car parked outside, who then whisks you to the Tranny Club.

END OF CHAPTER ONE

There's nothing that can't be made cooler by sticking an "i" on it

I'm have to admit I'm really enjoying Google's new-and-improved personalized home page, renamed "iGoogle".

It's mainly because of this little guy. He crops up in one of the new themes called "Tea House". Nearly all of the themes are dynamic and change depending on the time of day (or sometimes even the local weather).

On the Tea House theme this dude (I don't know his name) spends his whole day pottering around his little koi pond, doing different things depending on the time of day. I keep finding myself checking Google just to see what he's up to. :-)

I think one of the Google designers has definitely been playing Animal Crossing, Tea House has a very similar vibe. It should be cheesy, but somehow it works.

It's May the 5th...

...and Flickr wants us to chronicle our day in pictures.

So better get started with my own photo diary. Here's one of me still in bed...



Jane will vouch that this is an accurate rendition.

(Picture actually courtesy of I CAN HAS CHEESEBURGER?, currently my favouritest thing in existence.)

Tranny Saturn

Comic strips about transgendered planets? What's next, tranny toasters??

A new Axis of Evil?

Microsoft and Yahoo - "Not a matter of 'If' but 'When'"

My two least-favourite IT companies merging to compete with Google? I can't see it working somehow. There'll just be one big company producing ugly software and web applications rather than two.

Unlike many people, I don't dislike Microsoft for it's operating systems. Windows XP is pretty usable and stable, when patched properly. It suffers from it's popularity more than anything else.

No, I hate Microsoft because of Word. I can't describe how much I hate Word. It frustrates me in a million little ways. The way it tries to make you work how it wants you to, rather than working the way you it want to. It's complex and showy, but with absolutely zero finesse.

And Yahoo have always annoyed me. Even more so now I'm using a Mac as my day-to-day home desktop. In fact, the only benefit I can imagine with a merger is maybe Yahoo will stop pretending to support Macs and pull out of the OSX software market altogether, rather that releasing piss-poor betas of Messenger and waiting us wait forever for non-broken versions.

Probably not though. :-)

Just Neigh "No"

Latawnya, the Naughty Horse, Learns to Say "No" to Drugs

I found that via another forum that had also linked to my literary discovery, and I have to admit I think there's possible competition for the "Book So Bad it's Hard to Believe it's Real" award.

Nurse, the celery!

I had a stick of celery for my lunch (along with a sandwich and some crisps, I don't want you to think I've turned into a rabbit) and now my tongue's all numb.

I've noticed this several times in the past, nearly every time I eat raw celery it makes my tongue feel weird. Numb and insensitive to other tastes. Almost like I've been chugging on a tube of Germoloids.

So I throw this open to my learned readers... is this a well-known phenomenon? And what causes it? Is there some chemical in celery at work? I can only find anecdotal answers online.

Maybe it's some kind of allergy, or maybe I've discovered a whole new kind of anaesthetic. Might come in handy for the next professional chilli-eating competition I go to.

(Note to self: must enter more professional chilli-eating competitions.)

Oh... and as if this blog post wasn't interesting enough already here's a fascinating fact about shoelaces lifted from Wikipedia:

"Shoelaces did not become widely popular until people had shoes."

Happy Petticoat Day!

It's funny how the little sayings and phrases that your parents say tend to stick inyour memory.

One of the things my mum used to say when I was little came to mind this morning...

First of May, Petticoat Day!

Which is something I've often found myself repeating at this time of year, usually to very blank looks.

An extensive Google search on variations of the phrase turned up almost nothing, so I emailed my Mum to check that she did actually say it, and what it meant.

"All I recall is that as a little girl the little boys would shout it and lift up your skirt. I am not sure of the tradition. Maybe we just had a weird lot of boys at my school."

Indeed. So maybe just a pre-pubescent excuse for young boys to get a glance at girls petticoats. But there are just enough mentions on Google to suggest it was more than just a custom limited to my mum's school.

So, any recollections or memories of this? As a lifelong admirer of petticoats, I'd hate to see this time-honoured tradition die out!