A.C. Flory's Blog, page 26

No Jab Vaccinations on the way

‘Researchers have developed a mobile printer that creates temperature-stable, dissolvable vaccine patches on demand. The novel device not only does away with vaccine injections, but it would also enable vaccines to be delivered to remote areas.’

New Atlas: https://newatlas.com/medical/novel-mobile-printer-on-demand-dissolvable-vaccine-patches/

I’m not needle phobic, but I know a couple of people who are, so this ground-breaking way of administering vaccines [and potentially other medications] is fabulous.

More importantly, this 3D printing invention could be transported to remote regions where medical facilities are minimal. There it could print vaccine patches on demand, potentially saving millions of lives. That is a dream come true.

Read the whole article here on New Atlas.

cheers,
Meeks

jigsawplanet.com puzzle

I know I said I wouldn’t do any more Tukti posts, but their appearance is [mostly] co-incidental this time. I just wanted to show you how easy it is to create your own jigsaw puzzle. This is the one I literally just uploaded:

You can find, and play, my puzzle here. Or you can go to the main screen of the jigsawplanet.com website – here – and play one of a thousand different puzzles uploaded by others.

You do NOT need to login or sign up to solve the jigsaw puzzles, so it’s a great site to spend a few minutes [or hours!]. If you do sign up, you have the option of uploading your own graphics to the website.

Creating a puzzle from your graphic is ridiculously easy. Just upload the image, select the type of ‘cut’ you want – i.e. the shape of the puzzle pieces – use the slider to choose the degree of difficulty and…that’s it.

I know a lot of you take great photos so why not turn them into jigsaw puzzles?

Have fun,
Meeks

Tukti Family Portrait

Say ‘Cheese’!

I know you must all be heartily sick of the Tukti so I promise this will be the last, at least for a while. My eyes feel as if they’re permanently crossed, and I’m all graphicked out! The only thing left to do is to make the image, and some kind of background, big enough to use as a jigsaw puzzle on Redbubble. I may also post the jigsaw puzzle to jigsawplanet.com, my favourite site for online puzzles.

Anyway, that’s for tomorrow. For the rest of today I’m going to shovel some shyte [of the alpaca variety], play ESO, and generally just relax.

I hope your weekend is as relaxing as mine is going to be!

cheers,
Meeks

Redbubble – the good, the bad and the Tukti

Redbubble is a print-on-demand site that works almost exactly the same as Amazon: we provide the content and Rebubble takes care of the rest. No need for a merchant site or shopping carts or the hassle of shipping to customers, Redbubble does all of that, and when things sell the artist gets a ‘cut’, usually about 20%.

So far so good. What’s not so good is the interface. Redbubble may be easier to use than other POD sites, but there are things you need to know, and the interface doesn’t tell you.

What sort of things?

The one that’s had me pulling my hair out by the roots is the requirement to upload FIVE, separate images to Redbubble. Until you do, nothing happens.

I uploaded three Tukti images when I first started playing with Redbubble. I made sure to enter my account details, my Australia ABN, and all the other bits and pieces that the tutorial demanded, but no matter how long I waited, I could not see any of my designs on Redbubble. And when I searched for ‘Tukti’, which should be pretty unique, I got zip. So I searched the internet for answers and eventually found out where to contact Redbubble support.

Only at that point was there any mention of 5 images. Nowhere in the introductory tutorial is there any mention of how many images you need to have before your ‘shop’ will go live. Internet searches popped up advice such as ‘it may take 5 days to go live’ etc, but nothing about needing five images.

So I emailed Rebubble support:

So…I /do/ have to have 5 individual pieces of artwork up BEFORE my shop becomes visible?

WHY is this not made plain right from the start??????

If I had known, I could have saved myself days of frustration. And now anger.

I’ll be posting about this on my blog. Pathetic.

yours most sincerely,

acflory

To which I received the following reply:

Hi,
It looks like you’ve reached out about an account restriction status. For your Shop to be visible to the public, you must upload at least 5 pieces of public artwork and enable at least 1 product for each design. After uploading your first 5 designs, it can take up to 5 business days for your shop to be visible to the public in Redbubble searches and with direct links.
If you still need to upload 5 designs to your Redbubble Shop, your Shop will be private to you, and your customers won’t be able to see your artwork.
During this time, you may see a temporary banner when viewing your artwork that says:
This work is not publicly visible as this account is currently Restricted

I joined Redbubble on March 4th, 2023. I received that confirmation email on March 31st, 2023. The time between March 4 and March 31 was spent trying to find an answer. The time from March 31 to today was spent creating more images.

And now the good news: today, finally, my shop and my merchandise are visible and open for business:

Clicking on any of those images will take you to a page on which you can see the items displaying that image. For example, if you click on the image called ‘Little Miss says MINE!’, you reach the page below:

I’m not sure how many people would want to spend almost $6 AUD on a cutesy pin, but then I’m the world’s original Scrooge. At this point I’m simply relieved that I have merchandise at any price!

So, if you’ve been going crazy wondering why none of your images/merchandise is showing up on Redbubble, make sure you have 5 images uploaded and maybe that will do the trick. Good luck!

As for me, I’ll put up a direct link to my Redbubble page, eventually, but until then, you can find my ‘shop’ here or simply go to the Redbubble website and type either ‘Tukti’ or ‘acflory’ in the search box. ‘Tukti’ will take you to some of my stuff, ‘acflory’ will take you to an option to ‘view’ my shop where you can find everything.

I do NOT expect you to buy anything, but a ‘Like’ and a ‘Follow’ would be lovely. I think both help to make my stuff more visible to buyers in general.

And now I’m making a pot of green tea to recover from all this excitement.

cheers,
Meeks

Finished at last!

Everything about this image was hard. So relieved I’ve finally reached a point where I’m happy with it. Cheers!

Extermination

One of the most powerful and persuasive stories I’ve read in a long time. I pray it isn’t prophetic.

Myths of the Mirror

All images from Pixabay unless otherwise noted.

Mejan wondered if she’d made the right decision in caving to her son’s desire to visit the zoo. It was a place she didn’t approve of. On the one hand, it bred endangered animals for future release into the new wild zones. That part she liked. But it also preserved certain native species too dangerous for freedom, creatures forced to endure long lives in cages, denied their natural habitat and the opportunity to breed.

“I want to see them,” Benzi said, his heart set on viewing the latter in their high-security enclosures. “I need to write a report about an animal for a school project.”

Mejan’s nose wrinkled at the thought. “Why not pick a different one? An elephant or tiger? Something less scary.”

“I’m not a little kid.” Benzi huffed a challenge to say otherwise. “My teacher said the government is thinking…

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An Easter egg, from Big Brother to you. :)

I don’t celebrate Easter, but I do celebrate the act of giving, so I wish you all a wonderful Easter weekend with oodles of chocolate and gallons of good cheer!

hugs,
Meeks

My heart breaks for this ‘house’

I know it’s stupid, but to me this house is like an abandoned puppy…someone needs to save it!

Meeks

The frustrations of near-future speculative fiction writing

As the only other near future speculative writer I know, I just had to reblog Chris James’ post about replicators and their links backwards [to Star Trek] and forwards [to 3D printing] in time.
Near future speculative fiction writers [sticks hand up] extrapolate from the /now/ to the future. Sometimes we get it wrong…but the times we get it right, it’s worth celebrating!
Go Chris.

Chris James's blog

I’m generally loathe to discuss my writing on this blog, unless I have a new title to publicise.  The reason for this is that I really want my books to do the talking for me.  However, every once in a while something happens that makes me want to shout: “See? That’s what I said would happen!”  So, this week I deliver a thoroughly wordy and nerdy post for you, for a change.

On Tuesday, The Guardianpublished a story on how 3-D printing has, for the first time, produced edible food (well, just about).  In the Repulse Chronicles, set in the 2060s, there are devices called replicators, which I intended to be the next step on from 3-D printing.  There are construction replicators, marine replicators (read the books if you want to know ;)) and replicators that produce water and food.  However, there are snags and the food…

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Little Miss Tukti – caught in the act

The Tukti are vegans, and a staple of their diet is the seed of the plains grass. Unfortunately, the delicate purple flower of the plains grass contains a sweet nectar that the little ones love.

The nectar is fine for a special treat, but too much can make you sick. Tell that to the kids though!

The Little Miss in the image is being naughty… and knows it.

cheers,
Meeks