Bookmarks

• February 20th, 2008 • 0 Comments • computers, drawing, graphic design •

1) ConDFW starts Friday and I still have lots of drawing/sewing/printing to do. AUUUGH
2) I actually made some major headway in unpacking/organizing/labeling things in the studio that have been hidden from me since I had to kill Studio 4A and shovel it into boxes.

At least I got these nifty bookmarks done!

I’ve gone back to my nerdy fantasy roots and drawn some childhood heros to represent four of the Classical Elements: a mermaid for water, a unicorn for earth, a fairy for air and a phoenix for fire. Look, I even took the time to figure out how to spell the names in Tolkien Elvish. Just looking at them makes me feel all warm and squishy inside! These designs will make their debut as bookmarks and bookplates at ConDFW.

Epicycloid-A-Day

• January 1st, 2008 • 0 Comments • computers, drawing, epicycloids •

Hooray! It’s back up!

Epicycloid-A-Day, where you can get your curvaceous fix. I swear I’m keeping up with it this time around.

The biggest problem I keep running into is album management. Most automated albums don’t allow for sub-albums, which is a HUGE feature I need. Incidentally, it’s what keeps me from creating other online classification galleries for massive collections of photos and drawings. I want to be able to control how the user navigates, tag/classify photos and have an infinite number of subdivisions available. Also I should not have to have passed a college-level computer science class to put it together. Anything like that exist out there?

Resolution

• December 31st, 2007 • 0 Comments • computers, drawing, fun stuff •

At first I figured this was arbitrary, but I can probably slip it in under the radar as a New Year’s Resolution!

I’m not the most disiplined person in the world, as evidenced by my failure to upkeep various blogs and other dated material. There is nothing to indicate I reguarly produce work so I shall do so here! I will post more screenshots, photos and jps of my work.

Let’s start with something I did purely for fun yesterday, a LiveJournal mood icon set for my friend Nicole. She enjoys a Japanese comic book called Naruto so I made some of a character she likes named Temari.

(Please click to see a larger version.)

I don’t usually do pixel-work, but it’s fun to do every once in a while. I just started with a head base and put the different facial expressions in different layers. Easy to do and produced a fairly nice result, I think.

Updated, hopefully.

• March 20th, 2006 • 0 Comments • computers •

Ahhh. All seems to be relatively well on the computer front. I took Pearl to see the Mac geniuses to fix the problem with Dreamweaver. Somehow, I think that being in a store with other intimidating Macs made her decide to start working correctly. So! Crisis averted.

For now.

In the meantime, the paperwork for Patchwork Faces to appear at a Japanese cartoon convention this June is in the clear. It should be an interesting experience! Currently, my little hobby business has been very busy with the MS Society Walk fundraisers, so getting to keep all the profits will be kinda nice!

Oh $#!+

• March 7th, 2006 • 0 Comments • computers, meandering •

Ug, ug, ug and UG.

As previously mentioned, the new computer is great. Little Pearl happily pulls her weight and everything goes so smoothly.

BUT. (Note the big, huge BUT.) For some bizarre reason Dreamweaver MX 2004 will not run on my operating system, Tiger 4.5. I install everything ok, it sits there and hangs when I try to start the program. Macromedia/Adobe has offered up a few “patches;” sadly one of the patches I installed locked up while it was installing. (Even worse, this is an issue with the newest version of the program, DW8.)

In both the DW forums and Apple forums, people are well aware of this problem. The best advice several had to offer was, “You have to decide which is more important: DW or Tiger.” Another stated that he called up Macromedia/Adobe’s tech support and was given the ol’ song and dance of “We are currently working to resolve these issues.” Well, good thing I didn’t waste any money calling them up.

There are two reasons this made me beyond angry last night: 1) I cannot do work for a small company I was going to revamp a website for. This is after me convincing them they needed a make-over badly. 2) Gallery work for the Epicycloids has come to a grinding halt. I’ve considered completely forgetting about DW, and trying to do the site in iWeb, Blogger or MSWord. Sadly, I like the way my website looks and functions much too much for that. (And I just figured out how to make .ASP headers and footers! Gimmie a break!)

I’ve mused that this is some divine sign telling me to get the hell out of the house and do a big, messy painting and take a break from neat and tidy watercolored ink drawings. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. What frustrates me is I am still not sure what to do about the situation. The Internet has really become my own personal gallery, and right now it’s as if there has been some metal dome clapped over my means of sharing art (albiet in sporadic upgrades).

Extra Poor

• March 3rd, 2006 • 0 Comments • computers •

Well, a handy amount of money flowed in and I purchased Neptune’s replacement, Pearl.

Pearl is nearly causing me to go into convulsions with all the cool new things Tiger has, like Widgets. Like blogger widgets. EXTRA COOL blogger widgets.

[Insert sound of hyperventilating here.]

Computer Down

• March 1st, 2006 • 0 Comments • computers •

Bummer! Neptune went to visit the “Mac Geniuses” last week, and news was not good. Apparently she suffers from what is known as OLDNESS. The Mac Dude behind the bar ran all the diagnostics he could, and another ol’ Mac guy on my side of the bar marveled at the older machine. Outch, man.

While Neptune isn’t completely dead, I cannot risk working on it as there have been too many problems and SNAFUs which warranted a trip to the computer store in the first place. So! I’m stuck on the laptop, which is not really equipped for all the graphic work I do, plus it has a tiny screen that makes me cry.

Thus is born the Savings-o-meter to help me save for my new computer. Fortunately a recent birthday gave me a head start (Thank you, relatives!). In the meantime, I wonder what to do with an almost-working Mac G4. Rip it apart? Sell the remains? Mod it? (Even though it would be a semi-working mod?) Try to make an unreliable server? I’m not sure I have the time or the competence to do anything worthwhile with Neptune.

…anyone wanna buy a broken Mac?

If it’s not one thing…

• February 21st, 2006 • 0 Comments • computers •

…it’s another. Neptune, my faithful Mac G4 of five(?) years is trying to die. After acting slow and squirrely for a few weeks, I decide to wipe her clean. Despite having a complete lobotomy, she still acts not-quite-right and makes horrible beeping noises when she unsuccessfully boots. This afternoon she goes to the local Mac hospital for a diagnosis: here’s hopin’. I’m kinda torn up about what I want the prognosis to be. On one hand, a new G5 would be freakin’ sweet. On the other hand, a new G5 would be freakin’ expensive. Arrgh!

Right before Neptune decided to suffer from a major malfunction, I managed to get my new daily blog up and running: Epicycloid-A-Day! Hooray! In this fantastic new creation, I will post one blue ball-point pen drawing of an epicycloid per day. Following closely on the blog’s heels is a massive gallery on the website of all my epicycloid-makers, more commonly known as Spirographs. I’m very excited about this project: the idea of all that cataloging and classifying! Oooo! It’s already started! Can’t wait to post the galleries! Oh boy oh boy!

Re: Your Website!

• February 7th, 2006 • 1 Comments • computers •

I just received a strange phone call regarding my site’s status in search engines:

CELL PHONE: *ring!* 809 area code not from around here!
ME: Hmm. *answer* Hello?
WOMAN: [in strange accent with the "boiler room" in the back] YOU WANT WEBSITE?
ME: [puzzled] Excuse me?
WOMAN: WEBSITE YOU WANT LISTED YES?
ME: Er, this is a private line, thank you.
WOMAN: Oh. Ok.
ME: *hang up*

Less than a minute later:

CELL PHONE: *ring* 213 area code! Close enough to 214 at first glance to answer!
ME: Hello?
WOMAN: YOU WANT WEBSITE?
ME: [at this point thinking it's a potential client] Can I help you?
WOMAN: WE LIST WEBSITE.
ME: [still confused] You need a website?
WOMAN: LIST WEBSITE [unintelligible]
ME: Er…how did you get my card? [thinking someone passed a business card to her]
WOMAN: WE CAN LIST YOU WEBSITE IN TOP TEN FOR TOP TEN SEARCH ENGINES!
ME: [highly confused] Excuse me?
WOMAN: YOUR WEBSITE, WE LIST IN SEARCH ENGINES FOR–
ME: [cutting her off] I’m sorry, I’m already in the top ten for my name in Google.
WOMAN: OH WE DON’T JUST LIST IN GOOGLE, WE ALSO LIST IN–
ME: [cutting her off again] I’m also top in MSN and Yahoo.
WOMAN: WE USE OUR SPECIAL SERVICE TO –
ME: [annoyed] Look, lady, I’ve been online for 15 years. I know how to list MYSELF in search engines. It isn’t hard!
WOMAN: [silence]
ME: *hang up phone* Hmph.

Ok, so maybe I fibbed a bit; but if you type certain code combinations, my site does come up in the top ten! One of the three area codes where I live is 214, so by momentarily glancing at 213, I thought the second call was a local person calling for a potential website. It also helped the woman to have a strange accent; currently I’m working with two women from Hungary, so I thought this one was a friend. Sure fooled me! Grr! Intelius tells me it’s some company in Vermont (the 802) or Los Angeles (the 213). Either way, I’m highly confused and annoyed, considering I put my number on the no-call list. Something didn’t smell right, hopefully I won’t get bothered again.

Arrrrgh

• April 27th, 2005 • 0 Comments • computers, jobs, supplies •

Ah, I was cheerily coming up from the studio after a productive evening, only to have Neptune’s Finder malfunction. Insert sad sad noises here. I can’t for the life of me figure out what is wrong with it. Fortunately, my generous family bought Pisces for my 25th, so I can do a firewire connection and backup everything. Bah. Just when my evening was going so well, too!

* * *

I finished a lesson plan earlier this week involving CMYK printing process for my pedagogy class. Unfortunately, I could not procure any oil colors in process cyan, magenta or yellow. Acrylic was the only thing available: I purchased some retardant and decided to try and print using acrylics.

Materials:

ez-cut block
acrylic CMYK colors
acrylic paint retarder
various papers and posterboards

I actually started out using the acrylics without the retarder. The cyan rolled up well, but I quickly forgot exactly how fast thin layers of acrylic dry! Luckily I tossed my roller in the sink before it was ruined. After adding the retardant, the paints didn’t roll up as nicely, but didn’t dry out quite so fast. Interestingly enough, the recommended amount of retarder to add was no more than 15%…I mixed up about a 3:2 combo. While the package warned of tackiness for hours to come, the thin amount rolled onto the block dried QUITE fast. Not as good as oils, but they worked in a pinch! The only real problem I had was acrylic acting as a glue between the block and paper. Initially I thought it was a problem with the acrylics’ fast drying time. However I accidentally laid the block down on a dried print and it peeeeeeled the acrylic right off of the paper! There is now a thin layer of acrylic affixed to my block. Great.

After working out a lesson with examples I was somewhat inspired by using and working with the very “layerable” CMYK paints. Normally I’m a little reluctant to act on working with some new materials but I thought, “What the hell.” And painted something somewhat nice, complete with some modeling paste and a screen I used to make some t-shirts with. It’s not bad; it may not be good, either. It has a wiener dog in it. CMYK Wiener or something like that. Humph. So, it may not fit in with my usual portfolio…eh. Everyone needs a little ’bout of self-indulgent art therapy every once in a while! On that note, I’m thinking of starting a portfolio of pictures and items that are not typical of the usual suspects I create. When I returned from Europe with a painting for my parents of a campsite in Venice, I think they were surprised that I could do a watercolor landscape at all. (Heck, their favorite print I did was of an old Mexican man sitting in a chair admiring the landscape.) Parental admirations aside, I’ve been meaning to have a secondary gallery for a while now. Perhaps this is something I can attend to when I finish with these teacher certification classes!

(Incidentally, wish me luck…I have applications in at 6 districts in my area. Here’s hopin’!)