#meg's tech tips

[megbritt]

ok let's air out my grievances one by one

cause i clearly have a lot to say

and yeah so

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1) anime expo overall was fun

i made a bunch of new friends... got to meet some artists in artist alley i've never heard of before. i wanted to ya know, kind of partake in- cause when my cousins go to anime expo they spend like. $500. per day so LOL

im not like that. im much more frugal. i havent even watched anime in years soo

i did a buy a print on saturday when i went... they ran out of sleeves and the artist assistant told me how someone actually had the audacity to refund their print cause they ran out of sleeves.. thats fucking ridiculous don't get me wrong. i did end up buying a $10 print from the artist anyway 1) i couldn't get it signed ;-; luckily this artist is actually decently from my area so im hopeful they'll have this on sale again and i can rebuy it cause 2) it DID get trashed in my bag cause there was nooo sleeve so ;-; AGAIN IM HOPEFUL OK?! lol

masquerade was genuinely the only thing i enjoyed in this con??? and for good reason- it's pretty much what really impressed me about last year LOVED masquerade 2025. glad i got to experience that, watching it live ofc

honestly the cosplays of last year were far more impressive than this years.. but im also like. masquerade is just a solid choice. going to the show twice now i'd say it's good every year. im surprised they didn't sell out of tickets or whatever but ok i mean sksk

don't get me wrong, obviously ax had a lot of flaws AND I MEAN A LOT. theres kinda nowhere to go except a handful of stores that have no sitting whatsoever and the security this year was OBNOXIOUS AS HELL i mean it. they didn't want anyone sitting indoors on the floor basically... which is a really stupid rule imo. especially nearing the end of the day... cosplayers are just exhausted so

Overall, I really loved the experience this year, despite all its flaws. But yeah, that being said I'm not going back next year! I'm burnt out so

Happy I went, but ain't going back next year I suppose- so !

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2) i pretty much got scammed by a small artist tbh

im literally so bitter about this ! and it literally happened months ago but whatever LOL

there was this artist i was SOOO obsessed with who has a big following on youtube

loved her work so much and it said on her website she was going to be at anime expo for the first three days or something like that. so because of her i even ended up getting a 4-day pass

LITTLE DID I KNOW this was just OUTDATED!! that was from last year or two years ago- she couldn't get a table this year!! i just wish that damn website was updated HELLOOOO

i mean it all kind of worked out in the end but still

I loved her art so much that i bought about $48 worth of sticker sets from it (i think that's including shipping... yeah im pretty sure so)

IM SORRY BUT THESE STICKERS WERE MID AS HELL 👎

i was not happy when i bought these cause i did read a 4 star review on how disappointed they were that the designed looked amazing sure.. but it's not as saturated as they appear online.. and i remember reading that like yeah ok sure i should prepare myself for how desaturated they are

PERSONALLY??? if you want my honest opinion i would give this like a 2, 2.5 maybe stars out of 5

i love the designs.. thats obviously why i bought them. and i know if i were to ever post them online or something (probably never will at this point but who knows LOL) i mean its nothing a simple bump in saturation on photoshop can't fix

HOWEVER it does suck that irl THESE LOOK PALE AS FUCK!!!

i bought these cause i wanted to admire them irl

but i can't quite do that so

edit: honestly it's so bad!!! and i tried to leave a negative review online on their website but its heavily moderated and has to go through filter after filter FUCK YOU GUYS OMGGG. you guys should have a yelp account instead YOU COWARDS!! /edit

edit edit: so i did get a notification saying my review went through and according to the notification they "just sent" me an email to confirm my email (ughhh no i didn't give my real email obviously) but it's stupid YOU JUST KNOW !! i sent it through a burner email; but im looking through my "email account" i dont see it ! you just know they take out the negative reviews- COWARDS! /edit edit

edit edit edit: but yeah ya know. we live and we learn ! (thx j <3) this is why going to artist alley at cons IS SOO fucking important. cause. there you actually get to see the print. you don't get bamboozled ONLINE cause you actually can see if they genuinely impress you online... products online can easily bamboozle you.. you suddenly learn despite all the research you do YOU CAN BE BAMBOOZLED ! be careful out there guys stay safe /edit edit edit

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3) Lbcc

I don't know what is drawing me to this con... BUT IM OBSESSED LOL don't know why

i might go... tbh as we're starting to figure out i mean: im really not a con girl

these don't

really spark any joy in my life like music fests do

im not really sure why i took a break from music festivals anymore either anymore !! i do miss raving but ;-;

but something about this con; i dont know but

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4) TADC Cast

SO incredibly jealous of anyone who gets to meet pretty much ANYONE in the cast of TADC GAAARSHH

obviously they did have one event in my area- the final showing with lizzie (pomni), amanda (ragatha), sean (kinger), and marissa/vixen??? (remember her more from her online name srry; this is gangle btw) at burbank and i was like "ugh... like i dont want to go... what if it's sold out"

// tadc ep 9 spoilers

tw // death mention

the ending wasn't 100% great anyway i mean they kill off the fan favorite /hyp

obviously i dont consider abstraction a 1:1 to suicide (though many people do) i do agree with caine's VA alex when he said the following tweet (ok this is bluesky sorry but):

people make the argument that this is just ONE person's opinion- although it does carry weight bc it's someone from the main cast

I 100% think he's right.. I genuinely consider it canon

which is a big deal to me

cause i don't really consider literally anything else mentioned by the official creator or main cast or crew or anyone of this show via social media canon- aside from a few things goose says on tumblr like jax would've changer her name to Lilly" and things like that but

I do think it was kind of problematic that jax officially came out as transfem on social media- i mean it was obviously, not so obviously to some that it was canon in the show but i digress um

// spoilers end

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5) Restaurants

so unlike the other 4 this has nothing to do with anything i mentioned above so

honestly i just have to accept the fact that seriously.. some (nearly all tbh) all the fucking waiters i get are fucking weird, nearly psychopathic

i just have really bad luck with waiters in restaurants honestly

We went to Fish Grill the other day and THIS WAITER just gives me a weird ass look cause what i ordered i seriously made sure had no fat, no sauce... brown rice over white (i mean no white rice) all grilled only with a salad- UGH! it's seriously due to dietary restrictions...

AND THIS FUCKING WEIRDO kept going up to our table asking if i needed sauce... do we like the food, MAINLY STARING AT ME ugh

I know that other people's actions are pretty much never about you but omg but that guy was fucking psychotic you cannot convince me otherwise

everyone was like "why did you order like that" I HAVE DIETARY RESTRICTIONS OK?!

TBH YES go to other countries and you will find that. people just find the food americans eat so fucking weird, all the way down to how we eat it im so serious

even the philippines will be so fucking confused as to why americans drown so much shit in sauce

JUST FYI!!! it's bad for you!! seriously the saturated fats in most american foods- especially the sauces!!

It's so sad that in america they've completely normalized putting preservatives in food... adding a bunch of fat sugar and butter into everything... red 40 is literally banned everywhere. except the states for some reason. If you home cook a lot of your food like me.. going to restaurants and eating out just for the social aspect is like... fucking disturbing and bizarre-o but i digress ugh like you're so aware of how deep fried... oily.. sickingly sweet a lot of american food tends to be at social events like this- im hurling just typing this- this is why i hate this country (among many other things but) i digress

That and

I just have to accept the fact that SERIOUSLY restaurants have severely gone downhill in quality these days

Because of things like "use a qr code to order" like at that shit restaurant in irvine that sells shrimp noodles... like their soup is good.. but I seriously believe corporations and business owners alike SERIOUSLY HAVE NO FUCKING idea what it's like to be a customer like at all. cause using a qr code for anything is seriously gauche as hell... EVEN fucking worse when they have the audacity to tell you to ORDER from there- like i used to think that shrimp noodle place off of the spectrum was like a more high classed establishment right? well. ever since they implemented this trash "order from the qr" thing i no longer even consider it a restaurant- it's just mcdonalds seriously i mean

like i see why restaurants are losing money

the economy just blows

everything is getting way more expensive "$60 is the new $20" is not fucking funny.. everything is getting way more expensive and much lower in quality and/or quantity. but back to what i was saying about the qr bullshit thing yeah

it's little things like that that really ruin the experience; that's why believe it or not i weirdly do enjoy denny's more than these other restaurants, caaaause at least i won't have to use some shit qr service unless it's to go which i genuinely think is fair i mean

well actually i enjoy ihop more but that's besides the point skjdf lol

The point is restaurants that close down.. really do deserve to close down imo... RIP the restaurant that closed down in my local movie theater which inevitably made me just.. cancel my movie pass so i don't go to the movie theaters as often anymore but LOL

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6 - final one i promise askjdh

6) Generative AI Photos... "Photos" ?

I'm so fucking sick of seeing ai generated ANYTHING

and don't get me wrong

Obviously as a woman in tech, I do see the main upsides and downsides of ai-generated anything

Generative AI is very good at helping people understand the mere basics of something they want to learn. You can pretty much learn anything using generative ai and it is mad impressive.

It's useful. It has its uses. Does weirdly replace a lawyer but only sometimes.

Like I mentioned before it is useful and it has its uses. But it's misused all the time

It's useful and has many uses and is madd resourceful at times but- does have its moments

but please for the love of god ART IS NOT ONE OF THEM!!! im NOT sorry!! but the moment i see "oh this video game used generative ai in its music" i mean HONESTLYYY they probably didn't say it but even the graphics of that or-an-zed i_side game look ai generated as hell ! i immediately turn it off!! so do all my irls

cause something like that is a big middle finger to artists (i can only imagine) and if they do something like that- use generative ai in their own "creations" such as video, photo, video games, anything like that- it. it really shows they don't respect artists at all. and something like that isn't worth your time

I hate seeing a "photo" of something on instagram to enjoy it.. for like a few seconds. and then going "oh god you can see how this is ai generated" you can see all the errors and flaws and how soulless it actually looks and how godawful amount of water and how much it damaged and depleted ksjdhf UGH waste of the environment people FRRR

and then it ended up being a massive waste of time for me to see bc if i can only enjoy looking at it for a few milliseconds and then if i look carefully into it and cringe madly at it like seriously what was the point

[megbritt]

i wonder cause !

i do hear about people, mainly voice actors- OK A voice actor (be around here long enough you can probably guess who it is ahah 🐰💜🎪)

who even at their stage still pretty much have that imposter syndrome i guess?

im lucky in the sense that ive never really felt that way about my line of work

but it does definitely creep into my main hobby which is editing videos? 😁 (im in pain) and

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like my current video right? im about to post soon

DEFINITELY definitely could've been more improved

i could've edited it much better

but im also like i dont want to burn myself out; it's fine the way it is for the most part

im doing this thing (maybe it's common with professional editors- who knows but um)

where i already exported it right? its been rendering

and i noticed there was an editing flaw? i believe they're called a "flash frame"

so what i have to do is once again go over ALLL the video (im not gonna do that though im sorry LOL) and chase down that one flash frame cause it does.. it looks like a glitch. cause it basically is one so

so what im going to do is take my newly "rough cut" (ay! learning the terminology now lmao) vid that finished rendering... putting THAT into a new project timeline in premiere

and editing from there

cause there's too many layers too go through otherwise- all for a measely little frame- i can't believe

cause this video took me a long time to go through... and im not even done with it now but im pretty close but

edit: 3:11 am - editing the rough cut now - oh it was actually three consecutive frames; im starting to feel better about myself now LOL why did i think it was one though. and i found yet another flaw along the way so its fine i mean /edit

edit edit: 3:26 am huh. turns out i found yet another flash frame glitch- this time it was two consecutive frames though for the ep 9 one you'll see i mean /edit edit

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like i wonder if this is how.. the more humble voice actors feel like i mean

i try to relate it to my video editing hobby as much as possible

i imagine it's cause there's just always going to be so much learn and so much to improve on no matter how many years pass

at least my excuse with my job and in tech in particular is that tech is always changing.. it's always changing around it's always moving

that's why

it's ok not to know it all... who knows come tomorrow theres some new sick gadget everyone's trying to get the hang of.. give it a few years or even just a few months to even a few weeks it's outdated. and that's ok. you keep up with the times is all

I don't know where I was going with this but ok ! 👍

[megbritt]

On today's episode of Meg's Tech Tips: Tech Tips for the Not So Tech Savy

Daisy Bell: First Song Ever Sung by a Computer

This is a history class, a history lesson for today !

I will admit this one leans more towards self indulgent.. and pretty much isn't that helpful but please bear with me um !! THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT SO !

my current hyperfixation is on tadc ... what is new water is wet lolol

And on episode of this show they sing Daisy Bell. If you don't know what daisy bell is? Outside of the stigma of its being a super popular tiktok sound cause its allegedy "creepy asf"... tbh first of all, let me dispell this !! ITS NOT CREEPY OK... ...ok its not meant to be ill-intended; it just happens to have a vibe of being creepy- however ! The line "I'm half crazy / all for the love of you" is, well I interpret it as

these programmers probably went batshit crazy coding this..... in layman's terms: this is hatsune miku's grandfather. im so serious. the vocaloid software would've never existed without this. That's why I find it so fascinating its sung in this show about characters stuck in a computer simulation but i digress

This is the very first song ever sung by a computer !!! They truly made history with this song. Vocaloid would've never existed without it.

And honestly, more importantly, this is was coded by a woman

🌐👩🏻‍💻📁 🎮🖥️🕹️🧑🏽‍💻📎 ⛧°｡⋆

Believe it or not, if you didn't know, computer science used to be completely woman dominated. No really im serious

Women in tech such as Ada Lovelace and Margaret Hamilton get name dropped a lot.

But the truth is women to this day in tech are still very much the unsung heroes of code, Carol Lockbaum (Yeah yeah yeah and there were like two men that helped her or whatever) Carol Lockbaum literally invented the ability to translate math into raw data that makes the computer sing.

Nowadays its unfortunately just heard of as that one creepy tiktok song

But honestly? Back then it was seen as revolutionary.

These people probably went "half crazy" trying to figure it out. Truly a labor of love project. ♫ all for the love of you... ♫ And were probably met with such incredibly joy in a room full of happy programmers that actually got their code to work when they first heard it sing.

But anyway: here comes the sad part.

Unless you're really really GOOD?! im talking like top 1% or like 5% at the very top when it comes to skills as female coder

You're probably not remembered, going down in history for revolutionizing code, or getting promoted. as a female coder, in terms of contributing to revolutionizing code or what have you... Terrible world i tell yas

The reason computer science started becoming so male dominated is that it's only men in the field that only got promoted i mean... eveery once in a few, really every once in a blue moon, extremely rarely a woman in tech would get promoted just like men... but they had to be very very good on top of their game really rise above the competition you know what i mean

This pushed a lot of women out. And honest to god its pretty much still like this to this day. Quite unfortunate. I know.

🌐｡ ₊°📊⊹ ࣪ ˖💿๋࣭ ⭑

This is why I'm kind of like. say education and how female dominated it is... And. People talk about how ya know if education was a more male dominated field... teachers would actually have higher salaries, better working conditions better benefits etc etc and you're so right but

lbr if that were to happen? itd probably do a similar shift tech did where they would only promote men.. and very extremely rarely women

That's.. the only way I can view it as a woman in tech soooo

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Now something that's not really mentioned is that people LOVE to throw around there's only 10% of women in tech... its actually even lower than that arguably around 2% but the numbers tend to get inflated but i digress uhm. throw in the fact that 75% of women in engineering and STEM tend to leave the field...

the problem is these are american statistics

there are so many countries around the world where women in tech where the statistics are more like 30% women in tech, much higher amount of women in engineering and computer science fields than the states... A country I can state that has about 30% of women in tech is surprisingly the Philippines... or not so surprisingly lets be real.

I just hate when I think about how back then when I still perused tech hustle twitter (super toxic ass place lbr here i mean) lots of their percentages were wildly inaccurate. cause they would say like "oh only 5% of women in the entire world are in the tech space" something like that... AND A FELLOW WOMEN IN TECH SAID THAT OF ALL PEOPLE !! she was also a full stack swe like me which drives me nuts she said such an inaccurate statement like that. making a really generalized super inaccurate statement about women in tech as a whole....... twitter just sucks? honestly even bluesky kind of sucks..... i feel like people who were sick of twitter and were obnoxious as fuck over there moved to bluesky. and then it doesnt help that it doesnt matter what kind of account you have, or if you screened out as many political terms of any and all sides you'll STILL somehow get all these insanely political posts thrown at you; its kinda why i had to leave that website as well- SO ! *claps!* 🙏

🌐👩🏻‍💻📁 🎮🖥️🕹️🧑🏽‍💻📎 ⛧°｡⋆

Where was I going with this? Who knows.

The point is: there really just aren't a lot of women in tech really in general... definitely not in America or bunch of other western countries.

And to combat this we really need more women and girls in tech.

Daisy Bell is the very first song sung by a computer via programming all thanks to the hard work and dedication of Carol Lockbaum et al.

GOOD NIGHT EVERYBODY AND HAPPY CODING <3

[megbritt]

can you please explain what is going on with google recently and any fixes i need to do ??? i have android but i degoogled it all. thank you sensei megan !

Ok let’s try to explain everything simply so everyone is on the same page.

Google Shifts to AI Search, Heralding Major Change in How People Use the Internet

The company's sweeping AI overhaul of Search could reshape how billions of people find information—and impact the publishers and businesses

Google is losing popularity because they announced a new overhaul where they’re going to make their ENTIRE SEARCH ENGINE AI!!! 🚩🚩🚩 red flags all around

because of this, duck duck go, another search engine, saw a rise in popularity

your google product android being degoogled is a problem because of this:

the very simple solution is to… just get an iphone quite honestly. weirdly safer. or a nongoogle android (im assuming you have like the latest google pixel or smth so)

while im on the topic FOR THE LOVE OF GOD please DO NOT use oauth sign into google FOR ANYTHING avoid gmail as much as possible- i know in my case for groupwork or the like its harder cause. its just easier to use google doc or whatever. anyway my grad school sorta did us a solid making us use outlook over gmail like my undergrad- but other than that you should really have a nongmail account!! nonyahoo account too! dont make it so easy for hackers to find you on all accounts cause you have one personal account for everything- DO NOT DO IT!! NO ONE EMAIL ONLY- PRO TIP YOU REALLY NEED SEVERAL EMAIL ACCOUNTS ONE PERSONAL ONE FOR SCHOOL ONE FOR WORK ETC ETC NONE OF THEM GMAIL (as much as possible) AND DEFINITELY NONE OF THEM YAHOO EITHER!!! anyway im ranting now but thank you for listening

just lastly, think of your trying to keep personal information private or whatever much like smoking THIS INCLUDES POSTING ON SOCIAL MEDIA BTW!!!! think of it as akin to smoking, drinking, any addiction really. but social media is truly the new form of smoking

no use beating yourself up for something in the past when you literally didnt know any better; just try to better yourself NOW!!

but yeah lbr ya gotta balance it; people who left social media completely for years on end and have next to no social media presence lowkey give off psychopathic vibes in a lot of wayyys SOOO

[megbritt]

not entirely sure if tadc will be coming to india- i hope so though ! whats definitely a sure thing is google def lost popularity ever since integrating so much ai into their search results, or so ive heard !!

but to think google search which once reigned the internet is now stepping down in popularity ever since - its a change in the world order… its the end of google search as we know it

ive been using duck duck go for years now so this bit of news doesnt really affect me. but im glad to see people are starting to finally see the light

[megbritt]

“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”

－ Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

This is a quote taken from 2002 that I'd honestly say still holds up to this day. But since modern tech seems to be rapidly accelerating at an alarming rate.. I'd kinda change the age range from 15-28 for the second one and 29+ for the third

it kinda explains just ever so slightly why people who are much older are kinda set in their own ways you know what i mean

and why people, especially people much older than us are soooo anti-ai. and just anti-modern tech in general, even though lbr sometimes pen and paper just doesnt cut it (i said sometimes ok lol) and why, well, people around our age or significantly younger are... a little too open to the idea of just having ai do their essays for them but i digress goodbye

[megbritt]

i love this video; its as anti-sponsorship as it gets

my opinions?

nord & express vpn: decent

wouldnt use anything else express makes but !

the problem is the price gouging especially when i used nordvpn- i mean it was always expensive. i think they lure you in with like “its only $12/month!” no clue what the prices are now; probably more than that

point is what they dont tell you is

to get the discounted price you basically have to pay upfront and you’re stuck in their contract for like 2 years minimum so. i remember paying about $288 on the spot?! then im pretty sure they raise the monthly payment a fuckton thats when i stopped using it and picked something else. something much more secure and lesser known, so. something with much less advertising imo

if you want to use a vpn- and you should!! try to use one based in europe and not in the us, canada… europe just has much stricter laws (you can argue maybe a bit too strict) about the internet over there so

also just stay away from mcafee, not just the vpn but literally all of it; all of their products im just !

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edit: yeah even the little “Rated #1 by experts. Trusted by millions” like who

“experts” is vague… note that it also doesnt say millions of users or people around the globe- could be trusted by millions of falling leaf petals idk 🤷🏻‍♀️

[megbritt]

Yeah... In case you're wondering what I do on days - or even weeks - I'm sick of going to the movie theaters (sorry to their lovers lmao !)

I usually just read books. or uh. book LOL

I'm currently trying to chip away at the Harry Potter book series recently. I'm on Goblet of Fire rn.... LOVED this movie as a kid. Truly one of my childhood favorite movies. It's so fucking funny to me hahah LOVE to see that this book still holds up even through adulthood.

The book is actually funnier!! 🤍⚯ ͛　They left out Winky in the movies, which saddens me :/ winky this ptsd queen lolol huh and uh

Current Page: Chapter 28 Page +558/740

I'm currently on the part when Viktor Krum talks to Harry about "I vant to know... vot there is between you and Hermy-own-ninny" and im like BROO AHAHAH its so funny please 😆🎉 paraphrased: cause she talks about you ALL THE TIME- BRO PLEASE

👓👦🏻⚡️🐍🕯️🥚🪄🏃🏼‍♂️🌬️🏆🔥

Teresa of the chaotic corner descent lol youtuber recommended we all read this book called Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism (2025 Memoir) by Sarah Wynn-Williams... I believe this is in her the privilege to be offline video from back in march or so

sarah wynn williams is like the super famous whistleblower of fb or whatever

honestly i thought the book was boring as hell dropped it after like 30 pages... and i mean SHE CHOSE to keep her abusive ass job cause lbr she loved the glamour and all the flexing (...why did i use the british spelling there? lmao) she knows mark blah blah blah

I think Teresa kinda just chose.. handpicked the best part of the book to showcase in her video; where they lowkey gatekeep this.. Children of wealth, specifically of at least one parent in tech, more specifically meta. They don't grow up to be ipad kids. They're put in preschools or such where they're only playing with physical toys, such as blocks. Not a computer or ipad in sight. Cause tech gurus know how bad modern technology especially especially those damn ipads - are for growing minds, even for adults to be frank. And in this attention economy- I'm gonna stop here cause I dont want to go on a rant lmao

anyway !

why this is gatekept information ? couldnt tell you... if anything this SHOULD BE and hopefully WILL be common knowledge one day so uh

until then *tips hat* 🎩