The end of UK Angels

 

No, I'm not feeling like lobbing a snowball about today although it's rather cool out but after a good many decades one forum I have had continuous membership of will be closing on February 28 and so transitional arrangements as befits a well run establishment are being formed and I have made my own arrangements.

UK Angels was my home given my gender past since around 2005/6 although in 2008 I did lose my login stuff inexplicably so my account migrated from majorclanger to majorclanger1 where amongst things I arranged my first ever Tg meet up in real life in a town in mid cheshire we both knew.

It was where I learned about how the Law applies to Tg/Tgurls, how to deal with situations such as encountering the Police as this did concern Mom rather a lot at the time, what facilities you could expect to use and what your rights were.

It wasn't all Tgurl/Tg news and discussion although we did talk about issues, our preferences when it came to presenting "en femme" and where to by it from NOT from "Tat For Trannies" as we satirized a well known Tg/Tv supplier at the time who advertised in the popular press and whose owner had a tv feature or two on her.

There was a lively discussion about music in it's own sub forum where we had a number of people really knowledgeable about music and for a period "T Music" was a thing in an age of 96kbps mp3 downloads.

It was there where we did discuss various subcultures such as "sissy" and where I struggling with having a younger LG side and a Bigger side I came out and people accepted me as that hybrid which was deeply moving.

That paved the way for me to find groups that were LG and my excursions while not heavily pushed were known as a part which was touched on in this blog that started mainly for the Angels (and some folk at a music forum).

It is sad it is closing, part down to litigious attitudes by various bodies, more people using social media  and also upcoming legal changes but I have joined our continuation Reddit private group as Facebook is just too open for stuff you don't want family and the General Public to know just escaping.

As we say today "What is seen cannot be unseen" and things are screenshot and passed about too easily so a private group is much better.

Enjoying ones music

Every so often on one site I frequent there remains a lingering thought that a substantial number of its more active users appear obsessed with the pursuit of high fidelity to the point they are no longer enjoying the music.
It's hardly an original observation as Flanders and Swann wrote the great musical satirical piece "A Song of Reproduction" very much around that in the early 1960's  where the tinkering around buildings ones own 'rig' and habitual bashing of commercial equipment was all the range.
In my experience   many people fail to get as good a sound as possible from modest equipment simply because they have not invested the time to set it up properly, using good quality leads, determining the best spot and support for their loudspeakers that move the air within the room used and so on.
Those steps that need not cost much, saving many an audio fan from spending a never ending amount on upgrading when often they've not heard all their existing equipment is capable of.
One often feels like saying, go treat yourself to a new great recording be it on record, cd or high quality download instead of spending hundreds of pounds on what turn out to be sideways changes in hardware.
One thing you soon learn with good equipment regardless of price is, recordings vary wildly in terms of their own quality to which the best good equipment can do is not make reproducing them any worse than they really are and where available, look for the best sounding recordings of your favourite artists and music. 
Unfortunately much new popular music is made much louder with less difference between the softest and loudest passages and some classical recordings have had whole passages seriously edited to perfection losing any real sense of a conductor's own character showing in how a note is performed compared to recordings in the analogue (generally pre-1980's) era so much so that many musicians seek out these older recordings because they sound more like performances with their own character.
In many ways what is sad is it's  that while the wanting to hear music well reproduced that gets people into better sound, they get locked into obsessing over hardware and their specifications so they feel obliged to spend more time thinking about that than simply playing a recording and enjoying it.
When I'm happy with my equipment, as a rule I stick with it until either I become less satisfied or it needs replacing.

Pause for thought

While around the intrawebs last week I spotted this meme that held my attention for a good while probably because I recognize the universality of the experience. It sure matches my own because in the strive for perfection it's easy to forget how we get there, that in order to build say a house from a box of Lego, you need to find what best fits where but you learn from that. And other people are on the same trip, maybe playing catch up to you so it can be tempting to either do things for them or worse still berate them for not having learnt from an experience they never had.
The last line gets to me -I'll be honest here - because I've come from situations where people have put you on  a God like level and yet although it may true to say I'm relatively wise, I remain Human, imperfect in every single action but above all Thankful for my being alive and that of others.

Eviction time

Further to this post of 2012 (NEO: an end of an era ), Uncooked Media and NEO magazine announced with just 7 days notice it was to close the magazines old Forum on Friday February 22nd where some of us had accounts for quite a period, saying they hadn't anyone to look after it.
So not for the first time some us are forum hopping again and can be found found at UK Anime news's forum as most of us have agreed to move other there for now at least and nearly everyone bar me is keeping their old user names.
For posterity here's a picture of the forum for duoinchains, Shadowcat, max, demonix and the gang.

So long NEO Forums and raised glasses to our new home.

An end of an era

This isn't a a post I personally felt like making earlier on but actually with some some redacts I shall.
As many of you are aware I enjoy anime and manga reading much about it, buying magazines and spending money on it.
Here in the UK there is a very good 4 weekly magazine, NEO, published by Uncooked Media that has played a big role in popularizing anime and it's subcultures such as cosplaying as well as Asian culture.
Well from the moment I first saw it, I bought every issue and one of the things it had was  a website that offered more up to the minute news and a lively forum where people talked about things, contributed to threads that influenced the magazine covering  suggestions for content, reviews.
Coming from a close involvement with a forum with more drama than Shakespeare could come up, with it was a forum where I felt everyone gelled well together sharing their mutual interests even if complaints about a prominent magazine advertiser stocking counterfeit goods tended to be ignored time after time and anything critical regarding this disappearing.
Then at the beginning of this year, there was a bombshell as the Magazine and by extension its owner ditched the forum for a Facebook page as its sole means of communicating with it's readership with not even an announcement to forum members, dropping of any mention of it in side the magazine.
Because it relied as some forums do on manual authorizing of accounts for a period new members couldn't use it and because no one with administrator privileges was dealing with this, it was ripe for spamming.
Somewhat belatedly a person was given responsibility for looking after it but without making any personal comments the impression one forms is it isn't really their priority and attempts to allow involvement by long standing responsible members stalled for reasons I'm not going into.
The problem as anyone who knows about these things are, your core members drift off  - and many have - and with the problem around authorizing, moderating and banning spammers not really solved and looking very much that it won't be  is simple: Over time the forum dies off.
Now I have no issue with using differing media to interact with readers but a forum is a very different beast than a Facebook page with 'likes' and entries to just reply to and treating a community you created like that comes over as very shabby.
I shall be at Anime UK news under a new username. If you're at CR too you can message me there for it.