The old desktop PC, while not exactly dying, is definitely showing its age.  So I'm in the midst of moving all my software/data to a slightly newer iMac I inherited from a while back.  CPU is comparable and we maxed out the memory some time ago.  GPU is improved enough that things like Starcraft II and Skyrim are actually playable and WoW no longer has this annoying graphical stutter that was causing much irritation.  And of course everything looks much prettier when you switch from an old 17" Acer widescreen monitor to a nice shiny iMac display.

Now I need to get Photoshop set up the way I want it again and re-import all the custom fonts and brushes I had, and get the scanner to talk to the computer properly.  Right now it's scanning things at a really low resolution and I need to fix that, because it just underscores the fact that my recent drawing attempts have come out looking like crap.  And using Live Trace in Illustrator just seems to emphasize the crap factor.  Honestly I'm having better luck with writing than drawing at the moment, and that ain't saying much.

(In case you hadn't already guessed: yeah, yet another art block combined with a lesser writer's block, just adding to depression and a bout of perfectionist OCD-ing that's making it even harder to get anything done.  Big vacation coming up soon.  I am hoping that will fix things.)

*sigh*  I really, really, really need to sit down and learn how to do vector drawing.  Certain things would not suck as much if I knew how to do vectors.  Certain other things would be possible if I knew how to do vectors.

Still not dead.  Still writing stuff.  Maybe I should prove it by posting some text to Scraps or something.

Meanwhile, here's today's not-entirely-hypothetical thought experiment:


0. Your old PS2 console is dying and you're considering a replacement.

1. You see some games you really want to play.

2. You find out they're only on PS3.

3. You find some decent deals on PS3 systems.

4. You find out Sony's supposedly releasing the PS4 later this year.  You consider waiting for that.

5. You find out PS4 is not backward compatible with PS3 discs.  (Argh. )

6. You check to see if the software you want is downloadable on PSN.  Some of it is, some not.


Do you...:

A. Go ahead and grab a PS3?  Might be legacy hardware soon but you'll be able to play the stuff now.
or
B. Wait for the PS4 to show up and hope the stuff you want to play will all show up on PSN?

If you're going to have a teacher conference on the subject of genocide, I understand that it's important to have road signs posted to tell people where to go. But I'm not entirely sure that signs reading "TEACHERS GENOCIDE INSTITUTE" are the best way to go about this.

Today's message brought to you by Cultural Survival ([link] and Alma Temaj, Mam Maya spiritual guide from Guatemala:

***

Today is December 21, 2012, the end of the Oxlajuj B'ak'tun cycle, the end of the "long-count" calendar that finishes up a 5,129-year cycle in the Mayan calendar.  The ancient Maya people were master astrologers and timekeepers, tracking the stars and planets and developing a cyclical calendar. Today is also the Winter Solstice and the Mayan calendar predicts an alignment of the planets.

In the words of Alma Temaj, "In the Maya cosmovision, time is cyclical. Today, the long-count calendar culminates and planets align. It is not the end of the world, but the change of cycles, a new era, a new beginning. For us Maya, its the beginning of a cultural revolution that will enable us to recover our identities, traditions, and cultures. Spiritually, the change in cycles means a renewing of energies. Across Guatemala we are holding ceremonies and making offerings to mark the end of the old cycle and to receive the new era."

***

One cycle ends, and another begins.  What will the 14th B'ak'tun be like?

Maybe we can all renew ourselves and become better for it?

Just maybe?

I have sources suggesting that the world is going to end on 12/21/2012.

I'd suggest everyone give me all their money, since you won't be needing it after Friday.

...actually I won't need it either, will I?  Well crap, there goes that get-rich-quick scheme.



In other news my back continues to be annoyingly sore.  Before it hurt while trying to do pretty much anything and sitting or lying down was the only way to reliably stop the pain.  Now it's the opposite; everything tightens up if I sit or lie down too long.  This is making it hard to get holiday projects done.

Need to have another chat with my doc.


EDIT 8:30am -- Does anybody know if there's a way to hide comments you made in someone else's journal?  Accidentally posted the above end-of-world wisecrack in a journal about the recent tragedy in Connecticut and am currently feeling really f***ing stupid because of it.  Already apologized to the guy in private via dA-note.

Back pain that is still going on in one form or another after 10 days really sucks.  

Thank the gods for sick leave.

Gameloft ID is Shadowdrifter_R9 over there, if anyone wants to add.

As last night's submission proves, I'm not dead.  Unfortunately I am badly distracted right now.

Main problem: new day job.  The work at my new job is a lot more involved and requires a metric ton of attention to detail.  Good thing about this is the days tend to fly past, but then I'm mentally exhausted most nights and sleep is far more appealing.  Not as much energy as when I was in my 20s.

Another problem is a current crop of way too many good games competing for CPU time.  This has always been an issue, but between WoW:MoP and XCOM:EU it's a real problem right now.

And when I do get CPU time for being creative, I'm writing Conversion Bureau stuff instead of drawing.  With drawings I could at least post WIPs, but it's harder to do that with text.

I'm trying to think of ways I could at least let people know I was working on stuff, so it won't look like I'm completely dead around here.

MoP opening cinematic --> [link]

People can yell all they want about which cinematic was "superior" and all that crap.  I don't care which cinematic was "best".  All of the WoW cinematics are impressive in their own way.  This one just happens to capture the essence of a Pandaren monk (i.e. badass with a dash of silly) in a way that I thought was awesome.  (And the reaction of the orc and human was priceless. )

Still debating what class my Pandaren character will actually be.

And here's a link to Heart of Pandaria too, because it is also awesome in its own way --> [link]

and her band are very close to getting the funding they need to get their CD pressed, but they need to get it done by the 19th or it's a no-go, and that would suck.

Kickstarter page here --> [link]

Every little bit helps.


UPDATE 8/14/2012 --  Just looked at the page a minute ago and the band now has full funding for their album.  Highfives to everybody who helped out.

[link]

This.  Is.  Awesome.

Yep, been quiet a lot.  Again.

Several reasons for it.  Biggest one is that I'm about to start a new job and I've spent the past few weeks getting ready to transfer over to the new team.  Gonna miss working for my old boss but... well, let's just say I could see the writing on the wall pretty clearly.

Speaking of writing, I've been doing that more than drawing lately.  You can't really show text work-in-progress the same way you can show drawing WIPs, at least not here, which adds to the quiet time.  That said, I do have a couple pieces of text I could put up if anyone's interested.

And no, Diablo 3 is not helping.  Neither are WoW or Skyrim or Fallout 3.  At least those have some inspirational function.  And those kickass cinematics in D3 did give me an idea or two.

Caramelldansen!

'Now we need a story to go with the gimmick.'

I heard that expression more than once back when I was a lot more involved with Eyrie Productions and with fanfic in general.  And it still rings very, very true.

Coming up with an idea?  That's the easy part.  Coming up with a full-on story in which to use it?  That's a little more challenging.  Sometimes you get lucky and the story will be so clear in your head that it writes itself and keeps writing itself and you just keep typing as fast as you can before it goes away.  Other times all you get is bits and pieces that expand your original idea a little but don't develop into anything truly coherent, and you sit and stare at your computer for a while and nothing happens, and then you give up and go play WoW or Skyrim or whatever diversion you may prefer.

And sometimes in the process of writing the story, you discover that the original idea, well, really doesn't work that great in practice and you have to decide whether to try and rework the idea to fit the story you have come up with, or just throw the whole thing out and start over again.  Again, you may get lucky and the thing will re-write itself.  Or you may bang your head against the wall until WoW/Skyrim seems a lot less painful.

One good thing about being an artist is that you don't necessarily need to come up with that story (though it certainly helps).  You can just throw your ideas/gimmicks onto paper and/or the net for all to see and leave it at that.  Which is great, until an idea suddenly morphs into a full-on story that wants to be drawn -- or worse, be animated -- and suddenly you have this big laundry list of drawings required to tell the story, and you either lack the skill to make it happen or your lone pitiful pair of hands can't possibly keep up with your brain.

If there was a way to just upload thoughts and ideas into a computer and have them take shape before your eyes I would pursue it in a heartbeat.

By now you're probably wondering if there's some point to all this whining.  I'm wondering that myself.

So... ideas knocking around in my brain.  This is not all of them by any stretch, just the most prominent ones at the moment:

1. FoE fanart -- augh, I've got a whole notepad page on my iPod devoted to this one, but these are the ones 'on my mind' so to speak:

   1a. at the top of the FoE heap is a couple pics of Blackjack, sort of a "what might be" concept
   1b. followed closely by a couple pics of Littlepip in the same vein
   1c. still need to add the missing (and gory) piece of the "Velvet's Arbu" sequence
   1d. also wanted to draw something for the side story "Ditzy Doo Chronicles", if only to practice drawing ghouls

2. I did not intend for the FoE:Survivors idea to go any further, but now it's spawned an OC who wants some attention.  *sigh*  Still not a full-on story, but definitely one complete scene.  I'm trying to decide how to deal with this.

3. Still working on that Conversion Bureau fic with .  Again, something I intended to be a short story is morphing into something quite a bit more lengthy.  Leaving aside the problem of us both getting derailed by WoW on a regular basis, there's still a lot of holes in the plot that just are not writing themselves.  I've considered making a Tumblr page or some other kind of forum post; maybe making the story a little more interactive would help fill in some holes.  And on top of all that, the Season 2 finale kinda forced a re-imagining of the whole concept.  In a good way, I think, but it doesn't change the fact that I have to go back and re-think a bunch of things that were on the whiteboard.


And that's where things seem to be standing right now.  I'll let the viewers decide whether it's a good position or a bad one.

If you haven't run Software Update recently, do it soon.  Apparently Apple pushed out a fix to kill the Flashback trojan and reconfigure the Java web plugin to make it less vulnerable.

Apple Support link here --> [link]

Looks like the Java version you need to be running is Java SE 6 version 1.6.0_31.  They're calling it a fix for OSX Lion but I'm guessing all previous OSX builds will want this update too.

My suggestion for preventive strategy: don't download or install any browser addons you don't absolutely need, and keep automatic execution of Java applets disabled if at all possible.  This little bastard likes to pose as a plugin and then promptly turns into a remote-access data sniffer.

OK, I like this one.

Pandas are awesome.

That is all.

Check out this music by if you're at all interested in Stargate:Equestria.

[link]

I think it's a pretty good leitmotif for Celestia in that universe.  And nice choice of artwork too.

It's 's birthday today (2/25).

Go give her llamas and/or cake badges.