| ask the experts |
[09 May 2008|01:11pm] |
trying to get inspiration for an 'ask the experts' graphic, i went to google images and typed that in.
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| There's no bond stronger than that between a man and his locomotive |
[09 May 2008|03:34pm] |
After yesterday's New York Times article excitement, I now feel it proper to resume the image series "In Steampunk, History is Stranger than Fiction." No study of steam age technology would be complete without looking at the machine responsible for revolutionizing land travel in, and after, the 19th century: the locomotive.
Yours, etc.,
G. D. Falksen
Just another pleasant day at the rail yard.
( All aboard! )
Now this is traveling in style....
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| State of the Union / Long Post |
[09 May 2008|12:59pm] |
1. Been pretty sick. I've been coughing up disgusting crap for a week. Ugh... upside: The district office still hasn't called me, but I don't feel well enough to really be bothered about it.
2. God, these APU students moved in across the street, and they have this DOG...a husky. They are never there.
IT BARKS. ALL. FUCKING. DAY.
I cannot tell you how much I hate dogs, and more than that, people WITH dogs. It seems like every asshole in my neighborhood works from dawn til dusk, gets up at 8 am to mow their lawn, and has a high-maintenance dog. As such my neighborhood is full of bored dogs that moan and bark all day, and howl at every siren that goes past. Oh my fucking god, I want to kill all these people. Especially since I went to Germany, and everyone who had a dog there, had the most fucking well-trained, chilled out dogs I have ever fucking seen. AMERICANS: DON"T HAVE DOGS IF YOU CANNOT MAKE IT SO THEY DO NOT BARK AT ME ALL DAY. I KNOW THAT YOUR DOG CAN SEE ME IN THE WINDOW OF MY HOUSE. NEWSFLASH, I LIVE HERE, YOUR DOG IS EITHER BORED OR SEVERELY STUPID, EITHER WAY TAKE CARE OF IT.
3. As you know, I rented a spinning wheel for two weeks. As boring as it is for lj posts, I've been trying to spin as much as possible to a. get my money's worth and b. attempt to learn something.
At right: Some yarn. This isn't all of it (due to my lack of skill estimating volume, and bobbin capacity, I split it in two) but I spun 8 ounces of this. It is wool, alpaca and mohair. If you're like, "what does that mean to me," conventional wisdom says 4 ounces is enough for a pair of socks, and 16 ounces is enough for a small sweater.
I actually took this picture outside, and with the aperture at 8, but I guess the low light combined with the background (I was holding it in my hand in sunlight, the area behind it was in shade) made it look really dramatic. Neat.
4. I've been feeling kind of lazy/despondent about photography lately--until I got the spinning wheel. Then I wanted to take really good pictures of my yarn. Well, my point and shoot does fine-- but I've noticed that the really close up digital macro just isn't cutting it for me so I hauled out the dslr. Much better. (Too bad the light sucks today, but whatever.) I remember why I got this camera..I should use it more often. (Ok, so the official story is I bought it because Jim said so, but we all know what the real reason is.) Although, I apparently cannot take an in focus photo to save my LIFE today.
I took some excellently bizarre pictures of my yarn. Dur, if you have a better camera, you can control more of the picture. I KNOW this. So why do I let myself be lazy and try to take "nice" pictures with the point and shoot? Not that you can't, but...come on. I know better.
4b. I really miss having a flickr pro account. (Thanks again ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) which_chick. Wtf, she is so generous. I suck.) Once I get paid (either from some money that is still owed to me, or from finally getting an ACTUAL job) I gotta upgrade that again. I think my yearly $20 I usually spend to upgrade my LJ account is gonna go to flickr for a while. (I miss my icons but not that much. [I LOVE PARENTHESES])
5. THAT STUPID DOG IS STILL BARKING. OH MY GOD I HATE APU STUDENTS. I'm trying not to hate the dog because I know it's not the dog's fault but...seriously....stop barking. Why do dogs never run out of energy to pointlessly bark? There is nothing to bark AT, except for me in the window (but he barks even if the curtains are closed.) The dog next door will moan for hours on end for no reason. Do they not realize that people aren't home? Is anything not in their immediate environment a mystery, and they think if they bark long enough their people will Materialize? I don't know. I just know that this barking dog makes me really angry. UT OH A CAR DROVE PAST BARK LOUDER
6. In germany, I bought what I thought were chocolate coins. I LOVE chocolate coins. Germany played a cruel, cruel trick on me and they are, in fact, toffee coins. Not chocolate covered toffee (I'd be down with that.) Toffee. In a foil coin wrapper.
What. What the hell Germany. I thought we were friends.
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[09 May 2008|12:54pm] |
I just realized our oven has a very special power.
That is all...
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| Sleeping With Butterflies |
[09 May 2008|02:24pm] |
Commissioned for a surprise birthday, watercolor 8x10in. Illustration of Tori Amos song.
( Sleeping With Butterflies - FULL )
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| Sleeping With Butterflies |
[09 May 2008|02:04pm] |
commissioned for a surprise birthday present. finished this last month, couldn't post til today.
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| Marvel Sketch Cards |
[09 May 2008|11:47am] |
Yay! My illustrations for the Marvel Masterpieces 2 sketch cards have been approved. I did 100 illustrations that will be randomly inserted into packs of trading cards. It was fun drawing Marvel Comics characters all day. I felt like I was 16 years old again. Here are some of my favorites...
Spider-Man, (Ultimate) Nick Fury, Ghost Rider, WWII Bucky, WWII Captain America, Emma Frost, Red Skull, Crossbones, Warpath
( More... )
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[09 May 2008|10:42pm] |
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[09 May 2008|02:29pm] |
4" x 6", gouache.
"Girl, you'd better slow your ice cream down."
Made for Brian Butler's Ice Cream People project.
More information can be found here.
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| night falls. i rise. |
[09 May 2008|02:06pm] |
though i've never been much of a Spider-Man fan (i guess i could be if they kept him on Earth in his own universe and didn't have him undergoing reality shifts, har har), i've found somewhat of a new appreciation for the Spider-Man movies after i borrowed the trilogy from my mom this week and rewatched it. i still don't love them; there are parts i really like, but the detracting points often overwhelm the good stuff, namely how much of a drag Mary Jane is throughout the entire series. i can buy into the damsel-in-distress to a degree, but even by the second movie after MJ is kidnapped again, it's like "jesus christ, this again?" and then again in the third movie, i find it really grating. and not even the villains kidnapping her, MJ also gets into trouble from unrelated nameless muggers and collapsing architecture, and then compounding that with Gwen Stacy in the third movie, too. can't they come up with something else to get Spider-Man into action? i don't know. i know Spider-Man's very traditional "boy-rescues-girl" kind of thing (except Black Cat, i guess) but it gets really old and i can't help but groan through the whole movie, heh. i think the series' other most grievous error was to relegate Venom to the last 20 minutes of SP3 (which is also unfortunate because those final 20 minutes are the worst in the movie and border on being total garbage). i'm not really familiar with Eddie Brock or Venom from the comics but i love Topher Grace, and it was just a damn shame that he had such a small part even though his character had so much going on and the rivalry between he and Peter was so good and then the black suit thrown in there, that could've (should've) been its own 2 hour movie. and i like Thomas Hayden Church a lot but the Sandman kinda blew, him having the powers didn't really have anything to do with anything. i really liked how in the first two, Goblin and Doc Ock's powers had something to do with the plot and their abilities affected them, their powers were a point of contention, but with the Sandman he had these sand powers randomly (which is fine) but he never contemplated that he was made of sand; which is also fine i guess, but it came off more like they just didn't have time in the narrative to give him a scene like that. the movie's still fun but it ends up being such an unceremoniously cramped, ill-plotted mess. i still can't get over how Brock somehow knew about Sandman's dying daughter. HOW?!?! and that stupid fucking butler at the end revealing that crucial information, haha. he says to Harry "your father's wound was made by his own glider" and Harry's like "oh i guess Spider-Man didn't kill him after all!" couldn't Spider-Man have easily picked up the glider and stabbed the Goblin WITH it? i wonder if Harry fired the butler immediately after that; "WHAT?!?! i got my face burned off, ruined my friendship with my best friend, and basically screwed up my whole life and everyone else's for NOTHING?!!?" heh, worst writing.
anyway, i found myself comparing Spider-Man to the Iron Man movie, where even though the female character Pepper Potts is still a supporting player and she mostly just assists Tony Stark (while still being integral, of course) she's never in peril. they never had Jeff Bridges kidnap her and tie her up to lure Iron Man out or whatever, and Pepper seemed to be running around doing espionage and shit and setting off reactors the whole time. i really dug that. and that one scene where she stuck her hand inside Tony's ribcage. haha.
( i have to try. )
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| This Actually Makes Me Want to Have Kids |
[09 May 2008|02:00pm] |
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http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/014605.html Eight-year-old brother speaking to four year old brother in high pitched witches voice: First I'll burn you to a black crisp in a huge oven, then I'll start with your flesh...
Four-year-old: What will it taste like?
Eight-year-old brother, without pausing: It will taste like a delicious steak, then I 'll eat your teeth and they'll taste like crackers! But your hair, your hair will be completely burned off.
Four-year-old: [Giggles maniacally.]
--C Train
Overheard by: never having kids
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| The Friday X-post (Addendum) |
[09 May 2008|02:11pm] |
Forgot to include this in my weekly X-post, here is the theme song/intro to an animated series I'm currently working on....
( cut for convienience )
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| One step forward, one step back. |
[09 May 2008|10:59am] |
Biked 30 blocks yesterday on my new Nerd-Trike, and had a blast - about a dozen people smiled and gave me thumbs-up while I rolled past them with by gut and man-tits bouncing all over the place. How I've gone this long without putting an A-OOGAH! horn on that thing, I have no idea.
That said, the muscles in my legs nearly imploded while I was hanging with Anne a few hours later, which is a good sign that, yanno, I actually got a workout for once. GO TEAM BILL!
Unfortunately, I then woke up at 2am with one hell of a toothache that kept me up half the night (I didn't fall back to sleep until I'd downed a bunch of Benadryl while playing The World Ends With You for an hour), so it looks like I'm gonna have to find some kind of awesome/cheap "YOU AINT GOT NO INSURANCE? THAT'S COOL!"-type of dentist sometime soon here in Portland. BLAH.
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| Friday = webcomic lovin' |
[09 May 2008|10:15am] |
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music |
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Dier en Grey - Marrow |
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...or is that love-in? I dunno, either way, it is Friday, and there is a new webcomic for Normality Restored up and available for viewing pleasure/displeasure, whatever you wish.
Also included in this week's post is some news regarding new additions to the content for the site. In celebration of Kilian and I (and Will our illustrious techie guru) getting our collective acts together on a much more regular and timely basis, we will be adding a new series of wallpapers and icons/avatars and other puter-friendly whatnots for everyone to use as they see fit. Since this is the first set in the series, we're actually opening it up with not one, but two(!) wallpaper sets which include the original 'splosion splash (partially viewable as the header-banner for the site) and a brand new one featuring Kilian, and his demonstration of making bacon sexy, bacokkake?
For anyone who reads the (very looooooooooooong) commentary with this week's comic, Kilian and I are officially embarking on a quest to make NR, well, legit. As is a fully recognized webcomic, complete with listings in the weekly Joystiq Webcomic Wrap-up and other similar ventures. So, if anyone likes webcomics, and doesn't mind taking the mere minute or two that's required to go to the site and check them out one day every week (or more often, we would be pleased with this as well), we ask that you please tell your friends - pass it on - it costs you absolutely nothing,the 'experience' is utterly and completely free(!) after all, and it would mean a great deal to us ^__^
In other news, APril and I, along with son-number-one, will be moving... again, but this time within the same city, and with another couple who will be expecting their own male-spawn by the end of the summer. They're a very sweet couple and we're very much looking forward to the new living arrangement. Glad to say that the new digs are very nice, and the area is much, much classier than our current one. That's not to say that we don't like where we're at, it's simply that this new place is that much better.
For those from the Grand Chase and Trickster communities who might be reading this, I've seen the very awesome efforts of Segamew on the fan and official Forums for organizing a bit of a Megalo Life awareness campaign, I believe referred to as, Megalo Life: R, and I wanted to not only say thank you very, very much for putting this together, but that it is my very strong hope that it will serve its purpose and allow the 'powers that be' to hear the voices of the players (as there has been apparently been no attention paid to the 16 pages of comments on the final Megalo Life strip, still coming in, more than 4 months after its release) and that they will do right by the community and give them what they want ^__^ So please, keep it up and let's see if we can make some changes!
Alright, off to work, such that it is... and with luck I'll see you all around soon.
Love you all,
--Aleister
PS
as I'm not generally checking LJ that much anymore, I'm disabling comments here, but everyone is welcome to comment on either the official NR site, or even our... /shakes head in shame... Facebook Group if comments are needed.
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| Bleb. |
[09 May 2008|12:30pm] |
I've been creating some graphics. I decided to turn on all my layers and I got this. The clutter looked kinda cool. I added the little character today.
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Mea Culpa
by Mike Segawa |
I don't think the Zanex is working. Everything feels bad today. This will be the only sour piece I create though. I refuse to be a cliché.
~
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[09 May 2008|12:33pm] |
Granted this video is old, but I've been on a Moby kick lately, and had to track it down:
Titled "The 1K Project II", it comes from a cobbled together set of 1000 replays running on the same track in the PC stunt racer TrackMania.
I'm going to try and post here more often, most of life is getting back to normal... April was just bad. In several separate-and-distinct-ways bad. Dealing with things for the most part, others I'm just trying to avoid. Working on some unbelievably overdue commissions that I'm really happy with, after finally finding a way of getting things to look right without ruining them (with Photoshop. I've somehow completely lost the ability to paint by hand... paint well, at any rate.) But I'm having a lot of fun with these, and I'll be able to post images soon.
Back to work...
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| battlestar galactisimpons: because I have free time again |
[09 May 2008|10:26am] |
And, oh yeah. I almost forgot.
New Battlestar Galactisimpsons (the original set is here). I'll have 4x6 prints of almost all of them for sale at Emerald City this weekend. Where Jamie "Apollo" Bamber will be.
I'm so sorry, Jamie.
So very, very sorry.
There are two more, but they're a bit spoiler-y for this season. So you've been warned!
And by the way, I'm now three weeks behind on episodes, so keep your plot-current comments TO YOURSELVES, for the love of the one true Cylon god!
( Tory and Anders below the cut. )
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