The Vent and Rant Thread

[Renate]

Ouch. That must have been quite a bonk.

[Renate]

Here's my petty rant. I don't know if you have experienced it too, but the internet has upped its game on advertising. For example, bbc.com now has crappy animation popping up from the bottom of the screen. Other websites now have two video player windows open at once. It seems (to me) that the emphasis of all this advertising is new autos. I'm sure that you can find someone less likely than me to buy an auto, but I pray to the gods that be that I will never need an auto for the rest of my life. And a new Buick??? I don't think so.

[Sirtel]

I use uBlock and never see any adverts. On my phone I use the Opera browser, which has an adblock built in.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I use uBlock and never see any adverts. On my phone I use the Opera browser, which has an adblock built in.

One site that I visit has an owner that is trying to grind every cent out. Right before Thanksgiving (end of November) they turned on the ad faucet full stream. It was to the point that the site was useless. I edited my local hosts file to kill the main source of this stuff. I had never tried to circumvent ads before.

[Sirtel]

For me the whole internet would be unusable if I didn't block ads. I just can't stand them, at all.

[Rumpelteazer]

A while back I went to a copy shop to scan the paper patterns for the cross stitch kits I have (I use an app on my iPad to mark my stitches instead of messing around with markers or pencils).

The quality if fairly good, but once you zoom in the symbols get fuzzy. They don't get illegible and the app is still able to read the symbols. But it's a kit that'll take me 200 to 300 hours to make and it's just annoying having to deal with fuzzy symbols all that time.

So I just emailed a professional copy shop (mostly used by businesses and students to get their essays/thesis bound). I know they have self service scanners/printers/copiers but I hope they also offer the service to have documents scanned by them in a higher quality.

Scanning it myself isn't an option; most patterns that come with kits are A3 sized (or a bit bigger) and those scanners are not only huge but also extremely expensive.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer

A while back I went to a copy shop to scan the paper patterns for the cross stitch kits I have...

This is all Greek to me. When you're stitching as you do now and you finish one (or multiple) stitches you "cross them out"? Is your app intelligent that it knows what a stitch is or do you just "blob" some color on the area?

Your cell phone could be high enough resolution to capture it all. I presume that the pattern is of square cells (and not hex or something else)? What are the dimensions of your A3 in "cells" horizontal and vertical?

Are the symbols just for color or else style of stitch?

Enquiring minds want to know! How about a quick photo?

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Renate

Enquiring minds want to know! How about a quick photo?

I totally, totally agree... lost at it and wanting to know.

[Renate]

I'm new to this all, but I can't understand how it can take somebody 200 to 300 hours to complete this. Heck, I could probably finish it in a day.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Renate

I'm new to this all, but I can't understand how it can take somebody 200 to 300 hours to complete this. Heck, I could probably finish it in a day.

I guess it's like Lego, it depends on the number the pieces (or stitches)

[Rumpelteazer]

Originally Posted by Renate

This is all Greek to me. When you're stitching as you do now and you finish one (or multiple) stitches you "cross them out"? Is your app intelligent that it knows what a stitch is or do you just "blob" some color on the area?

If the app can read the pattern properly you can select a symbol (colour) and it highlights all of the instances of that symbol and yes, you can tap or swipe the the symbols you've done and it will mark them as done.

Originally Posted by Renate

Your cell phone could be high enough resolution to capture it all. I presume that the pattern is of square cells (and not hex or something else)? What are the dimensions of your A3 in "cells" horizontal and vertical?

Are the symbols just for color or else style of stitch?

Enquiring minds want to know! How about a quick photo?

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

I totally, totally agree... lost at it and wanting to know.

You can, but overall PDF works more seamlessly than a picture. For a picture you also have to make sure the paper is as flat as possible, which is hard with a folded up pattern (a scanner flattens it when scanning).

Originally Posted by Renate

I'm new to this all, but I can't understand how it can take somebody 200 to 300 hours to complete this. Heck, I could probably finish it in a day.

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

I guess it's like Lego, it depends on the number the pieces (or stitches)

This one took me almost 300 hours (including back stitching) and the one I'm preparing, Day Dreaming, has even more stitches since the Mucha one wasn't full cover. I love Merejka's kits, but they're not the easiest ones (big, with back stitching and blended colours).

I have some time getting it sorted, I still need to finish the last third of my current project (approx. 50 hours) and I'm doing two small and easy Silence of the Lambs patterns next.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer

This one took me almost 300 hours (including back stitching) and the one I'm preparing,

I'm impressed, I like Mucha a lot and this looks wonderful.

[Rumpelteazer]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

I'm impressed, I like Mucha a lot and this looks wonderful.

Thank you.

My sister loves Mucha, so I made it for her. It did feel like 50 shades of brown, which is why it took me over a year to do. This one is called the Blonde, there's also a companion kit called The Brunette, which is also have in my stash. I expect that one will feel like 100 shades of brown. I will eventually get to it, but I already warned my sister it might be a while.

The Blonde needs one more round of careful ironing and then hopefully it's ready to get professionally framed.

[Renate]

That looks even more complicated than my fish.

No, I didn't mean to use a photo directly. I meant that it could have enough resolution to take in the whole content. A program could convert a photo into exact quantized places where it could say that this is 167, 142 burnt ochre. I presume if they have light brown and slightly darker brown they differentiate by either false color (light brown=yellow, dark brown=green) or symbols?

[Rumpelteazer]

Originally Posted by Renate

That looks even more complicated than my fish.

No, I didn't mean to use a photo directly. I meant that it could have enough resolution to take in the whole content. A program could convert a photo into exact quantized places where it could say that this is 167, 142 burnt ochre. I presume if they have light brown and slightly darker brown they differentiate by either false color (light brown=yellow, dark brown=green) or symbols?

That's what I use Markup R-XP for. Unfortunately with kits they don't give the number of the thread colour. You get the thread marked with the symbol. I use my DMC colour card to figure out the colours (or if it isn't DMC as close as I can get) and manually enter all the colour numbers into the app. I know from experience that Markup works better with pdfs. I tried with pictures when I started on the Mucha project and I couldn't get it to work to my liking. With a pdf it usually recognizes the grid pretty well (if it isn't scanned completely straight you can easily tweak it a bit) and it can index the symbols well (didn't work that well with a jpg). Photo support might have become better since then, but I know how to deal with pdfs and if you have a fair scan it'll work. It'll work with the scan I have, it recognized the symbols without a problem. It's just that I hate to look at the fuzzy symbols, it makes my eyes tired more quickly.