The new Alex Verus novel is out, I might write down more thoughts on this book and series when I finish it.

The unique thing about Verus that stands him apart from the mages in this book and in the other books, is his power. It’s almost entirely useless in battle. Unlike Harry Dresden, Verus does not storm in and set fire to everything. He can see the future. He can see ALL of the futures, and by determining the one he likes best he can follow the steps to get there. It’s a neat power, and I’m sure Dresden would be intimidated by that. No really, I’m sure:
“Harry Dresden would like Alex Verus tremendously – and be a little nervous around him.” – Jim Butcher
That quote is on the cover of the book, which I do not have because I have an e-reader. JIM BUTCHER LIKES THIS BOOK, GUYS, AND YOU SHOULD TOO! I did!
There were two things that pulled me out of this book while I was reading it. The first was some parallels between this guy and Dominic Deegan. Verus is what Dominic Deegan was at the very beginning, when the comic was competent. Like early Dominic, his battle strength comes from magic items and his ability to see what his opponent would do. UNlike Dominic, Verus doesn’t grow random powers at the whim of the plot. And Verus’ cursed girlfriend is actually an interesting character with an interesting curse.
The second disruptive thing was very small, and possibly only noticeable by someone like me who remembers details from stories, but there is a sentence in the book that comes right out of another source I won’t name. It surprised me, and completely broke the flow of the book by making me think “Wait, I’ve heard that before… What is it from? Oh… is that a deliberate reference? Is that allowed?” However it happened, it distracted me, but I don’t think anyone else noticed.

The book hits a lot of cliches, with the tragic past and the wizard council and all that, but that’s a good thing. Things wouldn’t become cliched if they didn’t work and work well, and if I didn’t want to read urban fantasy cliches I wouldn’t read urban fantasy! It’s not a book-of-the-year winner, it didn’t blow me over with literary excellence, but it captivated me while I read it. Once the action started, once I stopped being picky, I felt involved in the characters’ situations and wanted the good guys to win. I stayed up until 1 AM reading it, and once I forced myself to put it down my head kept spinning about it and the characters featured in my dreams. And then I woke up and finished it in another 2 hours.
That’s the most important thing for me in a book, that I finish once I start. I don’t finish a lot of books because I like my books to be easily devoured. That’s what this book is, it’s delightfully digestible!
Time for dinner I think.
Fated is good. It is of Storm Front quality. It is a good start to what could become an excellent series. I liked it, if you like Harry Dresden you’ll like this book. Here’s the website, and here’s a conversation between Benedict Jacka and Jim Butcher.

The Marx Brothers are fantastic classic cinema, and you should watch them. This emulates the opening of Monkey Business.

Cats have it so easy. Find string, play with string, string goes away, nap, dream of string. This GIF isn’t that popular on my popularity-judging-site (DeviantArt) but it’s one of my favorites because it actually has a narrative.

And here’s my latest. The new contest is “Man vs. Machine”. So I could either go for Terminator, or I could go for the dangers of mundane objects. I made this into a movie trailer, it just seemed to work better this way.

As for my November Challenge, I’m working on it. Having a full time job is kind of time consuming. =(

Ever since making that dice bag for my boyfriend a year ago, I’ve thought that making bags was a good way of the future for me. It’s nice to have a canvass that’s not flat. So as part of my new initiative to complete something, I made another drawstring bag yesterday, and I rather like how it turned out.

I used this guide to determine how to make a round bottom. I wanted to decorate the drawstring with dice, as I did back here with can tabs, and thought that sort of thing would work better on a rounder bag. I didn’t make a lining, which I should have done. The bottom is not perfect, but it widens out the bag so it doesn’t lie flat like the others I’ve made. It will hold more.

I chose to use grommets instead of having the string run through the bag’s lining, which makes it much easier to alternate holes and hang beads. Unfortunately I made the bag too small. There are only 8 grommets, meaning I could only use 4 dice.

But, I got to use a drill and turn some dice into beads! Did you know that it’s quite difficult to drill through a D4 and have it not shatter and/or melt? Here’s a pic of my first attempt.

Hilarious! I chose to use different colored dice instead of from all the same set. I think it looks better. I hung the D20 on the final string, it is used to close the bag. Tah-dah, finished product!

It’s far from perfect. Were I to do this again, I would make the bag bigger and I would make a lining for it. For a first try, though, I think it turned out well. And that’s one best idea ever to strike off my list! I may put this bag up for sale despite its imperfections.
My day job may make it hard to blog every weekend, but I’m going to try and finish a project a week. You guys will hear about it. Thanks for reading!

So, first.
In America, you kick ass. In Soviet Russia, ass kicks you!

Which was really just a set up for some pandering.
In America, you judge IA entries. In Soviet Russia, IA entries judge you!

Finally, I wanted something for the OOTS category.
In Soviet OOTS, Obvious Attack, bitch!

Not my best gif, but it gets the point across.

So those are my entries. Just thought I’d share!

A Game of Thrones
So, this book was ok. It got good. There were some awesome battles, and I was genuinely curious, sometimes worried, about what will happen to the characters. Not all of them, there are SO MANY EFFING CHARACTERS. I still like Tyrion, Jon and Arya best. I’ve heard though that if I like a character, that character is going to die. This news makes me nervous. I don’t like being depressed by what I read, and if the most tolerable chapters of these books vanish I’m not sure what will keep me going.
The novel was well-written, of course, and the pacing was better at the end. For that reason I’m no longer dreading reading the other 4 books. I’m halfway through the prologue of A Clash of Kings (introducing new characters, seriously, more freaking names to worry about.) I think I’ll take a break and watch the HBO series before I continue. My reading of A Clash of Kings got diverted by

Ghost Story (spoilers)
Ah, The Dresden Files. So addictive, it was satisfying to get another fix. Unlike Changes, Ghost Story didn’t leave me hating Jim Butcher. I wasn’t chomping at the bit for more. This book was lacking a lot though. It felt like the flashback episode of a TV show. It’s a character growth book. Ok, now a spoiler for Changes but one you would have learned by reading the blurb on the back of Ghost Story: Harry is a ghost, having been murdered at the very end of the last book. He’s on a spiritual journey without any magic, though he solves that problem with surprising ease. We learn a bit about Harry’s past, and Harry learns about the consequences of his actions. At the end he’s wiser, he knows he has to consider his choices carefully instead of plowing straight ahead with a bad plan. With great power comes great responsibility, basically. I’m surprised he didn’t use that pop culture reference.
The pop culture references are thick in this book, and sometimes they come completely out of nowhere. They’re hilarious though, if you find that kind of thing funny, and I do. The biggest problem with this book is the ending is such a cop out. The villain isn’t disappointing, but the resolution is completely out of nowhere.
Ok, not his murderer so much. That was a surprise. At the end of the book, we’ve learned a lot about Harry and about how his friends are dealing with his death, and how his actions have severe consequences and he needs to think a little. But this book could have been skipped entirely. Nothing’s changed at the end except Harry’s outlook.
I wouldn’t advise skipping it entirely, it’s well-written and enjoyable and intense, definitely a good read. And fast too, like all of the Dresden books. If you haven’t read the rest of the series, don’t start with this one.

And now for something completely different. Music!
Join Us

Can’t Keep Johnny Down

Above is the single from TMBG’s 15th studio album, and their first album for adults since The Else in 2007. And WOW! I love it. It has such a classic They Might Be Giants sound, unlike The Else. They skipped the accordion entirely on The Else, which was a huge mistake. Join Us is awesome. It even has an awesome album cover, a pink hearse on monster truck wheels, I got a t-shirt of it.
It is 18 tracks long, and it’s almost like a reaction to their joint career of albums geared towards kids. They’ve said in interviews that it wasn’t planned as such. But it is a whiny album with a lot of mean, jerkish lyrics and themes. Can’t Keep Johnny Down is a “song of defiance. It’s an incredibly catchy song. That’s a very nice, bittersweet concoction of a very bitchy lyric with an incredibly sunny arrangement. The guy in the song is a complete and utter asshole and the song is in the perspective of [him].” – John Flansburgh in a Spinner.com interview

It’s not the only song with bitchy lyrics. Cloisonné features a guy telling a singing raindrop (how incredibly TMBG) to mind his business, and shut his god forsaken mouth. There’s a song entitled When Will You Die with the lyric “We’ll be lining up and buying tickets and then we’ll be jumping up and down on your grave.” That’s one of the milder lyrics in that song. Celebration seems to be about Anonymous, of all things. “Perpetrators of invisible crimes, Our only magistrate sits in our minds, The audience cheers as some people attack, The secret smile of security guards”.
You can find these songs on Youtube I’m sure. It’s a fantastic album. It reminds me of John Henry, the underrated 1994 album with Snail Shell on it. Except I don’t think this album will be underrated.

So, there’s some ramblings about some media I’m devouring this summer. Today came out another book for me to read, The Magician King, Lev Grossman’s sequel to 2009′s The Magicians. A chapter in, it has that same sort of disillusioned urbanish fantasy quality that the first had. If you enjoyed the first, well, I guess I’ll find out if you’ll like the second. I might even tell you about it!

I made it on a whim, so it’s a little messy. A little skinny too, and the ribbon doesn’t work very well as a drawstring. BUT, it holds things. My cousin seemed to like it.
There is nothing, NOTHING, that will transfer a drawing to green linen. I try and try and try, I buy new product after product, everything fails. I will complete my secret project, dang it. If I can’t figure out anything, I will make it on white linen as is my usual default.
My computer’s kaputt, so I’m unable to make Iron Avatarist entries. Which sucks, because this month’s theme would be a good one. Someday I’ll be able to draw again.
I guess that’s all I have to say right now. I’d make a vague promise to post more often, but we know how that works. Seems some people are retaking ds106, maybe I’ll steal some of those projects again, but since my art tools have been destroyed and my motivation to do ds106 (Tempy) is no longer taking the class, probably not.

I’ve been making more animated gifs lately, thought I’d share some with you.

Last semester when we watched Twin Peaks, I wanted a gif of Dale Cooper giving a thumbs up. I decided it would be better to make a gif of him giving a thumbs up while on the floor bleeding after being shot. This gif could be used to indicate reluctant approval of something.

I cannot stop giggling at this one. This is kind of a story. This is one of my sister’s friends. Basically, he was dared to break this plate, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not do it. A headbutt is no match for 1970s stoneware.

My sister later broke the same plate by hitting it with another plate.

So, I’m not dead. I am, in fact, graduated. I have a job. It’s pretty great. I need to get back into blogging. I have an idea for a series of posts, I don’t know if you would be interested, but I want to try a Let’s Read. It’s like a Let’s Play, but instead of playing a video game, I read a book and post once every chapter or two and give my impressions on how the book is going. Everyone’s told me to try and read A Game Of Thrones, and I think I’ll give it a shot again. Last time I tried, I wasn’t able to keep reading, but perhaps if I blog about it I’ll be more motivated to finish. Don’t know if you all’d want to read something like that, but I haven’t posted in months. Obviously readers are not important to me. =P
No, you are great. If all goes well, I’ll post again soon.

Photo by nickehret

So, yesterday I was thinking about Terry Gilliam, the guy who did the animations for Monty Python. Since I’m getting my BA in German with a minor in procrastination, I decided to take my new favorite photo for chopping up, and make a simple animation.

There is another part of this I am currently working on, which is actually why I hadn’t blogged about it yet. I’ll edit it into this post when it’s complete. =)

Also, since the Detective Work pictures proved enjoyable to some of you, I’ve made some more. They’re much more difficult, I’ve been told that only I can find Sherlock Holmes in these photos. So ha!

I had more to say, something about ds106, but I’ve forgotten. There will be another post this week.

And today, as I’m sitting about, trying not to do real artwork, I get the idea that that poster has the perfect face for hiding in other pictures. So that’s what I did for these three photographs. If you find them, you win an internet cookie.

I followed a worn path from the bottom of our hill into the forest. I’d never gone there before in the past, it was a frightful place, and I was sure there would be many wild creatures. I had no weapon but the knife my father had given me. There was no light but the moonlight, filtered eerily through the trees. To my right, the leaves rustled. I took out my knife and tackled the creature as it revealed itself to me: just a deer. I held my knife to its throat, and nearly dropped it when the deer spoke.
“I know how to get to the tree of life! I can take you there!”
I backed away from the animal, and it did not flee. “You can take me to the other side of the world?”
“I can carry you on my back, but you must close your eyes. And keep them closed, no matter what you hear.”
I climbed on the deer’s back, and she bolted off, going faster than I’d ever traveled. For a time I heard nothing but the wind blowing past me. Then there was a loud noise and a bright light that shined through my eyelids. I couldn’t help it. I opened my eyes.

We will probably have to move some of the sprouts into a different container.

Alan has already spread to two pots, and soon will take over the entire living room. Tempy provided him with some sticks to climb up.

The herbs have sprouted as well, but I did not get pictures of those as they aren’t that impressive yet.

In other news, this semester is going quite well! Only a month until spring break!

Anyway, a week ago I planted some swiss chard in a pot in my apartment. I named it Jürgen, because that is what one does.

Today he sprouted!

See, he’s up there at the top of the pot!

Hopefully he will grow into a plant full of leafy goodness!

Huh. That’s kind of creepy. If all goes well, I will be eating parts of Jürgen when he grows up. Is this like naming a cow destined for slaughter? Nah, it’s different. I won’t be killing Jürgen. Though given my luck with plants in the past, I might murder him by neglect way before he grows. Hopefully with Tempy keeping an eye on him as well, he will survive.

Expect updates on Jürgen in the future! And possibly on Alan (Tempy’s sweet peas), who also sprouted today.

No pictures for you yet, but while I’m working on school I’m also working on another simple animation for the Playground. I hope it’s up before it’s irrelevant.

I will have to make some most excellent videos with this Flip. Shame I missed the deadline for the film fest. I had a great time in the evening with my family, and a fantastic Christmas dinner. I hope you, dear reader, had a delightful holiday and got everything you wanted!

It’s after Advent, so Christmas music is allowed, and it’s Die Toten Hosen, which makes it excellent.

Second, add this to your bookmarks bar, and destroy the heck out of the internet. It is great fun, and especially helpful at this time if you dislike German punk music. Thank you, Erik, for enabling this destruction!

Finals occur next week, then winter break. Hopefully it will be a peaceful break, and I will get a lot done. The part of me that is thinking about Christmas shopping is right now trying to be occupied with studying instead. I will allow myself the bare minimum of Christmas cheer, and that is Die Roten Rosen. Here’s the album version of the above song. Most of that album is fantastic. Some of it goes too far, but that is the point of punk music isn’t it!

We did not win. In fact, the judges mostly just looked at it in a somewhat confused manner for 3 seconds before passing by. It was fun though.

Pictures!

Awesometown. It’s made of lines.

Poor Awesometown, being besieged from above and below.

It actually looks pretty cool lit up. If the judges had seen this they might’ve actually looked.

I don’t usually have burgundy hair, but now I do. I kinda like it, but I don’t think I’ll stick with it once this wears off. I should get a better pic of it though.

We did not win this contest, but I did win later this evening a contest in which I ate a donut hanging in the air without my hands faster than my opponents (Erin and Meredith.) I’m so classy.

Here is the owl that I won.

Ah, school-sponsored Halloween activities, with cheesy contests and prizes from Five Below. Harmless fun.

Updates on the pillows for RC when I stop being too busy to start them.

It’s a drawstring dice bag featuring a picture of us hugging! Made of black velvet with glow in the dark thread!

How about a how-to?

I cut out a piece of cloth about 8″x20″ and folded in in half so that it was 8×10. I unfolded it again, so that the embroidery would only be on one side, but the crease on the bottom helped me align it. Then I used transfer paper to put the pattern on there and got started.

There was a problem with the chalky paper on the velvet. The body lines were easy enough to trace over, but the heads had so much detail that they faded off really quickly. After a few failed attempts at making that work, I just taped the picture on there and embroidered over it. Then I carefully picked the paper out. It worked pretty well. I think the transfer paper would have worked fine if I’d used a different sort of cloth.

Folded it again along the crease, inside-out, sewed up both sides like you do.

I left some space at the top unstitched, so that I could fold it over to create the seam at the top where the drawstring would go.

Threading the cord through was a bit of a challenge, but it turned out nicely I think!

It’s pretty cool, if I do say so myself. The picture glows in the dark. =D The bag’s biggest flaw is that I made the cord too long.

So that was exciting! I can put another product on my list! And RC likes it. ^_^

RC’s commissioned me for 3 pillows featuring his D&D characters. I’m such a nice girlfriend, I’m letting him pay the cost of 1 pillow for all 3 of them. I’m putting those off for the 17 days til he gets here. ^_^ I’ll drag him to the craft store so he can specify what he wants.

In the meantime, I’m still brainstorming ideas for a coin purse design. I’ll probably go for a flower, to keep things simple. I also like the idea of a pair of eyes on one side, with something like “this purse is protected by ninjas” on the other. The purse would be black, the eyes glow-in-the-dark and some other color. I need to do some actual sketches, I think.

I’ve decided these posts need more German. I’ll be translating some nice propaganda for German History, so I might make some posts about that in the future. For now, the German word of the day is glänzend. For no particular reason.

The embroidery was fine, if I do say so myself, though you can tell that some of the numbers were in a darker gold thread.

I ironed it onto the material, and put some blue scrap cloth on the back to keep it from burning.

Chopping it up was pretty heartbreaking.

Gluing it together resulted in a very depressing sight.

The problem is, as I should have foreseen, the material I used to make the fabric stiff enough to fold. It doesn’t hide itself very well, and it doesn’t fold very well.
This wouldn’t be so frustrating if I hadn’t dawdled for a year. Oh well. Es kommt wie es kommt, lesson learned.

The better news is, I can work on other things now!
I was looking around a 10,000 Villages store in Richmond and came across some coin purses from Vietnam or someplace. I looked at them and realized that they were pretty much just squares of fabric sewn together with a zipper on the top, and I thought “These would look neat with some custom embroidery!”
I think I’ll make one. I’ll use black aida and that glow-in-the-dark thread. I’d say “it won’t take me long”, but look at how long the above disaster took me.

The theme for Iron Avatarist this month is “magic.” On a forum full of D&D nerds and more talented artists who have made countless magician avatars, I’ve got no chance. I’ll just wait for next month.

I haven’t had much to post about, for I have not been working on anything. There wasn’t room in the car for my needlework supplies, and I just received them from home this weekend. Now that I have them, back to the blag!
Unfortunately, though I have the stuff now, I’ve also not worked on anything sufficiently since the last post. There is but one panel left to complete on the D20, I’ll be done with the embroidery by the end of tomorrow. I’ve got a new idea that I want to try, and I absolutely must finish this so that I can.

Classes this semester are German History, German Civilization (which is basically German History but counts as credit toward my major), Arabic 101 and Intro to World Religions. Looks to be nice and light. Nowhere near as fun as last semester, of course.

Sorry for the lame-bees post. Pictures of the (hopefully completed) d20 and details on my new ideas coming soon!

So, every year at the county fair there is a needlework exhibit. I’ve never entered anything, because I am a fool. Also because if I add another project to my wall of projects it might collapse. But I’d like to discuss the pieces I saw. Unfortunately, there was a plastic sheet between my phone camera and the artwork, so the pictures have a touch of glare.

I think it’s ridiculous that someone can win a blue ribbon for using a needlework kit. A pattern I suppose I could handle, but a kit? That’s nonsensical. Following a pattern takes some skill, but filling in colored squares takes nothing but patience, and one doesn’t even touch this hobby if one doesn’t have patience. I’ve used kits, of course. That’s typically how one gets into an artistic hobby these days. But entering one into a competition? I can’t imagine that winning a ribbon. And yet.

A blue ribbon. Impressively detailed and everything, but still obviously a kit. I don’t mean to belittle the work they put into this, but I think that’s cheating.

These two were my favorites.

In other news, ACK. I am completely exhausted from helping my father paint the kitchen this week. It’s yellow now. Which is kind of weird. And we have a new microwave above the new stove, it’s all very exciting.

Finally, as I said in the last post, the Iron Avatarist competition this month is “Summertime”. I made an animation that sums up my thoughts.

I have more ideas for this piece. We’ll see if they reach fruition by the time the contest ends.

My 4th of July celebration was awesome. I went down to Wise to visit my father’s family. It was the best trip to SWVA I’ve had in a long time, I think because there were so many people. Also, the fireworks were amazing! Here are some pics!

For the Fourth, nothing beats watching fireworks up close and having ash and wood raining down upon your head!

Also, Cornhole.

I was born 12 weeks premature, and a lack of oxygen during my birth cursed me with epilepsy. My seizures, as far as I can remember, went unnoticed until I was 6, but looking back on them my mother thinks she can remember me having them earlier. I have temporal lobe epilepsy, and experience complex partial seizures.
Let me describe my seizures for you.
First, I experience a feeling called an aura. It feels like a pressure, right behind the bridge of my nose, like I’m holding back a yawn. There is a sort of spinning feeling. Not a dizzy feeling or anything, but like my head has been opened like a CD player and there is a disk spinning right between my eyes. Meanwhile, saliva gathers in my mouth, because if I swallow the aura lasts longer. When I was younger, I used to see faces or hear sounds when I had an aura. Well, not really see them, they weren’t in front of my eyes, but they would appear in my imagination. That facet of the seizure disappeared when my imagination dwindled, I suspect.
Not every aura comes before a seizure, and not every seizure is prefaced by an aura. Up before the surgery, I was having at least 3 auras a day, independent of any seizure. When I did have seizures, I wouldn’t remember them. They are complex partial seizures, so I am not jerking about uncontrollably on the ground. I don’t know what I look like, but my parents report that I sort of just phase out. I stare, and it becomes obvious that I’m not really there. I stiffen up, and I turn my head to the left. I make a scratching motion with my left hand. Sometimes I collapse. Once, I was up at the alter at church receiving Communion, and right before the priest got to me I fell over on my side. My friend’s mother joked that the priest should have taken the chance to cast the demons out of me.

My sister adds: “you start by staring off into space. then you sort of turn to the right and start pursing your lips like you’re trying to suck in your cheeks. you pull up your left arm and tense your hand. You tremble slightly with how tense your muscles are. If someone tries to stop you from walking away, or from doing anything, you grab their arm, turn to them, and begin bending it back, staring at them with lifeless, unseeing eyes.

…You did that to me in the middle of a movie theatre and it was the scariest goddamn thing EVER.”

I almost always left the room while I was having an aura, so some of my most memorable seizures occurred while I was in the middle of leaving. I would feel the aura, and get up and walk out, all without realizing that I was doing it. Whenever I had a walking seizure, I would already be in the midst of a seizure when the aura came. They just felt like falling asleep. I would leave class without even knowing I’d gotten up, and once I even tried to get out of a moving car!
Having a seizure at school was always a riot, they would take my blood pressure, put me in a wheelchair and wheel me over to the nurse’s office. I was always exhausted after a seizure,  so I would nap until I felt well again, or until my mother came to get me.

Now some medical stuff. From the age of 6, I was on Tegretol, until I was 15. I also took Sabril (which is not FDA approved, I was in Germany at the time) and Topamax at different times. When I was 15 and taken off the Tegretol, as it was doing more harm than good, I went on Keppra and Lamictal, and I am still on those today. My seizures were intractable, meaning nothing was working. So I went in 2005 and got a temporal lobectomy.
Some of those diagnostic procedures that I had to go through were ridiculous. The infamous  Wada test, which is used to establish which cerebral functions are located in which hemisphere, involved having a catheter threaded up from my femural artery into my brain. They put half of my brain to sleep, asked me questions, put the other half of my brain to sleep and asked me more questions.
The exact surgical procedure I went through is referred to as “grids”, basically an EEG on the surface of my brain. The Wada test, and other MRIs and EEGs and scans of all sorts suggested that my epilepsy was focused on the right side of my brain. The surgeon implanted strips and grids of electrodes on the surface of my brain, and they monitored my brain activity for a week in the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit at Johns Hopkins. Then, when they finally took the electrodes out, they took out the offending piece of brain, my entire right temporal lobe, including the hippocampus and the amygdala.
That didn’t entirely work, though. Due to the brain not being as color-coded as they’d like, the surgeon left a tiny piece of hippocampus in there. I had a breakthrough seizure a year later, and I’ve had one every spring since.

Except this past spring. I’ve been seizure-free for over a year. There is hope yet for getting a driver’s license!

Thanks for reading, if you did. I’ll post better stuff later.

Then, photocopy the composition and make 2 different symmetrical compositions. Here are my examples of bilateral and radial symmetry.

Next I had to photocopy one of my symmetrical compositions and make it non-symmetrical.

Finally, I had to paint 2 copies of my original composition, one using colors to disguise the fact that there are even drawn shapes, and the other using color to indicate depth.

OOF. Lots of little work for this project. It was pretty fun though.
This whole class was pretty fun. Di Bella’s a good professor, I think he’s probably much better when he has a 15-week semester to teach rather than a 5-week summer course. I learned some things, and made some pretty cool stuff. Now, how about that whole studying thing for the Classics final….

As for next session, I got the Public Speaking professor to force add me into his class, and I dropped feminism. So yay.

I got a new theme. The picture problem the other one was having was just too big of a deal, since I’m posting a lot of pictures. I’ll try to pretty this theme up a bit more, but not too much.

This last project dealt with textures! For the first part, we were to find a photograph – I used this one

Then we were to take a piece of tracing paper and place it over a section of the photograph, and find the darker and lighter areas.

And then, using a grid pattern, I transferred the section onto a larger sheet of bristol board. And in each little square on the grid, I drew a texture. I repeated them a lot.

You’re supposed to be able to see the abstracted photo. Can you see it?

I can only see it because I know what the source photo looked like.

The second part was a sculpture made out of objects found in nature. Here are some of my sketches

I chose the giraffe walrus. I made a wire support structure, and I used magnolia leaves and mulch chips found on campus.

He’s cute! I want to remake the giraffe walrus out of bean bags. I’m going to the craft store this weekend, I’ll see if I can find any such materials…. yeeeeeessss…

The last and final project for ART 105 is a project involving 3D values and shading. You’ll see pics when I find out how that goes.

In other news, I’m staying for the second session of summer school, because I can’t get a job. I’m taking “Intro to Feminism”. It was the only speaking intensive offered. x_x Not particularly looking forward to it.

So, for part 3 of the negative space project, I chose to make my found-object sculpture using empty Diet Coke with Lime cans, since I had them. Here are some pics.

Chopping and smashing the cans

My first idea, with a twirly ribbon of can draped down the middle staircase of crushed cans. Di Bella thought that looked too decorative.

Final sculpture. I changed it a bit.

Instead of both sides being semi-symmetrical and staircase-patterned, I changed the other side. The pieces across from each other are pieces of the same can.

In other news, the comic I drew for April’s Iron Avatarist, which I posted back here, won me the gold in the “funniest scene” category and the silver in “best overall”! The newest contest is about war, I have no obvious ideas for that one. Maybe my classics class can inspire me.

Living in the UMW apartments is cool. But there’s no longer an easy way to get to class from here since they built a huge fence along the outside wall, which before now was climbable. The front gate is open all the time, what’re they trying to keep out by blocking campus from they apartments? Us, I suppose. However, now we have a fridge with a freezer, a stove, an oven, and a DISHWASHER.  A DISHWASHER. That will make life easier next year, when we cook.

Classes seem to be alright. In the past 3 days, I have learned the genealogy of the Greek gods, and I have glued construction paper to bristol board.

For the purposes of comparing negative/positive space, axises, viewer completion and all that jazz. I like the one in the lower left, but apparently the fact that it doesn’t touch the side means it doesn’t quite fulfill the assignment. It’s just sort of floating there. I should put some black around it.
Oh yes, something else totally lame, I bought colored paper at the bookstore, and though the package advertised having about 6 or 7 different colors, it only contained black. My project will be most boring. The Chibi is letting me borrow a few scraps of color.
This is part of a larger project (or as Di Bella calls it, a problem), the true meaning of which has not been revealed to us. For today I created a similar piece using construction paper and bristol board, comparing the figure and ground. Since I am uncreative and bad at coming up with stuff on the spot, it involves a jar of bees.

This was the first draft

And this is the final thing, after the professor constructively criticized.

Very nice, I think! Di Bella wondered, “is the jar full of honey, and the bee is going after it? Well it should be up to the viewer to decide.”

And tomorrow I am to bring a sketchbook to class. The final part of this problem concerning negative/positive space is a sculpture that uses mass-produced non-artsy material, like toothpicks or bottlecaps. I’ll need to think of something.

That’s not quite true. I’m getting pretty bored. Everyone who keeps saying I’ll have fun at summer school is probably right. I’m rooming with one of my best friends, we’ll be living in an air-conditioned apartment, and I don’t think I’ll hate my classes.

BUT, I might have gone to Europe! I might have gone to Germany, gotten 4 credits of my major out of the way, and well, experienced more Europe. I lived in Wiesbaden, Germany when I was 8 to when I was 12. I want to visit many of the places I don’t remember or didn’t appreciate. And I want to visit the places I didn’t get to visit when I was there (mostly Italy.) But, because only two people signed up for the program, I do not get to go to Europe, and will not unless I get a job that allows me to travel. And without those 4 credits, I’ll have to design an independent study course. Because I need 12 more credits in my German major, and there is only 1 intensive offered per semester. x_x
*sigh* Oh well. Hopefully I can figure out something I’ll like. Something involving WWI, I figure. We have about over 9000 books on the subject here, including some primary sources.

Anyway. I won’t be taking any needlework to summer school. I’m taking Design Principles, which means I’ll have enough art to do. Also, my needlework chest is big and a bitch to transport. According to Ms. Art Major of Chibi Charms infamy, DiBella is an awesome professor. Expect the next few weeks of posts to be about assigned projects. With some Greek/Roman mythology thrown in (taking Classics too.)

Can’t stop rereading Jim Butcher’s Dresden Crack. Need a new series. I think I’ll try Discworld.

So, I started this several months ago, as an attempt to make something that is not a pillow. If it succeeds, it will look like a 20-sided die, and it will be turned into a keychain.

Gold edges and numbers, purple filling. I downloaded one of those foldable templates and transferred it to cloth, which I will stiffen and fold once the embroidery is done. This has a very high chance of failing horribly. The first time I tried something similar, the cloth collapsed and the glue didn’t hold and it ended up a mess.

It looks a lot better in that picture than it is. *feels ashamed*

But the concept remained intact! I’m using a smaller stitch and a different template. I’d hoped that the satin stitch might help keep the panels straight, but it just wasn’t good material for folding. This time around I’m using even softer cloth, and a more flexible stitch, which seems absolutely counterproductive, but I’ve bought some iron-on backing that might do the job of keeping the fabric stiff. I hope it works out better. If it does those silly geeky folks I tend to hang out with might want one. And once they decry its uselessness, and I lament its cost to manufacture compared to the price they’d want to pay, I will go back to making pillows and framed samplers. If it doesn’t, well, lesson learned, never try anything new! =D

I had a dream last night about the border between life and death. It’s in Corolla, North Carolina. With dragons and pirate skeletons, it’s hard to go wrong.
Every dream I’ve had this week has featured one of my classes from last semester. Library Science is next. Clearly I miss school.

The summer begins, and so begin a deluge of projects that I may never complete!
Most of what I make are pillows. I’ve made a gallery of my needlework. It isn’t quite complete, as much of my products are made as gifts, and I did not start photographing them until recently, but it’s a fairly good sample. For the vast majority of my projects I use DMC cotton floss on linen evenweave.

Pictures and descriptions of my more recent endeavors when I find my camera.

That’s all I can say for now! Oh, and for those interested, my dream log has updated.

…. HEY LOOK, A DISTRACTION

Last week I drew this for a Giant in the Playground contest.

A Rabbi, a Priest and a Buddhist Monk walk into a bar

The theme this month is “jokes”.

Here’s a Wordle of my dream log!

Also, Im Juli is my new favorite movie, and you should watch it. If you like/don’t mind foreign flicks and/or romantic movies.

Also also, FUCK YOU JIM BUTCHER! STOP CACKLING AT US AND FINISH WRITING GHOST STORY! DON’T WRITE MORE CODEX ALERA, I DON’T CARE, YOU CAN’T JUST LEAVE ME WITH THAT CLIFFHANGER FOR A YEAR! YOU BASTARD!
…. The above might make more sense to you if you read The Dresden Files and have read the most recent book, Changes.
Am I allowed to curse on my blog?

*deep breathes* Ok, next post will be a comic.

The video Kayla and I made

Also, some idiots in Oklahoma

And back to my German paper. x_x

Remember Merton from last class? Well here’s a tribute to Merton from Ben frickin’ Folds. (I <3 Ben Folds)

And I believe I owe y’all one of these.

A guy runs from a rabid animal and doesn’t get hit by a train.

With help from Kayla.

It makes music!

And it’s vaguely relevant to what we’re talking about in class.

Also, new comic.

I can’t get my flickr plugin to work with this theme. I have no idea why, I’m working on that. Right now my account has some of the aforementioned documentation from this weekend’s exploits.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/47424424@N07/

My favorite flickr story is one I’m sure at least some of you have heard. Aaron Nace and Rosie Hardy, both ridiculously talented artists, met on Flickr, fell in love and started their own photography website. I absolutely love their work, their photoshop talents never fail to wow me. And of course, I always like hearing about how online relationships work out. >.> I couldn’t possibly link to all of the photos they’ve made that impress me, I encourage you to check them out.

On an unrelated note, I’m 21! Crud, when did that happen?

On a slightly more related note, wheee! http://jarofbees.net/comic
Not as pretty as I’d like it. Working on that.

For other resources? Um…. I’ll natürlich continue blogging about dreams I’ve had. My dream last night involved a girl I was babysitting getting kidnapped by Lex Luthor. And that’s just terrible. Did you know he stole 40 cakes once? I had to save her and ended up having to fight faceless goons in his private jet.
When this gets going I’ll talk to the nice folks over at Giant in the Playground about my strip and get their input, and if I can get people over there to check it out and like it then frankly I’ve won who I want to win. I’ll post a strip or two on my Deviantart. My comic is not for a specific audience. Except for the lovely ladies from high school who thought I should write a story out of my dreams and got me to start blogging them in the first place. One shouldn’t start advertising a comic until one has at least 20 strips in the archive, though, or is at least far enough into the first story arch for a reader to figure out what’s going on.

Ich habe gerade gelernt dass mein Aufgeregtheit sehr ersichtlich ist. >.> Ein schlechte Sache? Offenbar nicht! ^_^

Spanking eggplant hostess mazeltov
Pester caulk fulsome killjoy
Fussy scalding alpine pinochle
Gargle farfetched umbrage inlay
Poprocks beanbag martingale sleuth

And some examples of my own:

Corset zebra peanut baroque
Palace cancel theoretical cabbage
Variable diffuse omelet sparrow

These words must be unrelated, and the group must not express and idea through normal English syntax. Letting your mind wander into these groups is an interesting mental exercise with entertaining results. And might be helpful in prompting a story. Well, maybe. If you can create a story from “Corset zebra peanut baroque“, I will give you $5.
Once I pay my outstanding debts to my roommate and my sister.
Also, such a thought process might be related to some forms of schizophrenia.

1 (pikistrips)
2 (flickr 6-word story)
3 (joggle; coming soon)

The tale of Batshark is a joke between me and my boyfriend, inspired by, of course, bat-shark-repellent-spray. This one test of the 50 tools has absolutely nothing to do with the story I’m actually thinking of telling, my aforementioned webcomic idea. The tools provided aren’t really what I’m looking for to present that story. Reece, meanwhile, was so inspired by the pikistrips comic above that he wants to continue making Batshark comics. The real reason my joggle version isn’t done yet is that he wants to do the voices and he hasn’t had the chance yet. I think a Batshark strip could get a decent audience. Tell me if you think otherwise!
The pikistrips one was by far the most fun to create, a comic format is really the only way to deal with such a story.

Onto my webcomic idea.
I’ve linked to my dream blog already, which in retrospect was probably a mistake, as most of my story is stolen almost directly from those dreams. It will be several of the more plotted ones, perhaps spliced with the ones with less plot but cool elements, and all of these will be linked together by a separate plot that I’ve thought up. It’s sort of mad-sciencey. I haven’t quite finished thinking up the plot, it doesn’t have a definite ending, but it has a beginning and the beginning of the middle, and combining that with the dreams I’m planning to use should put me well over 10 weeks. I’m going to be drawing the strip myself, by hand or using a vector program, as that’s really the only way to get the look I’m hoping for. I figure combining that work with the other schoolwork I have, it will update on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule. No one has anything to read on t/th anyway, what with most other comics updating m/w/f.
Now, I won’t want this to be posted on my wordpress blog. I’d hope to do something like jarofbees.net/comic. Or stick it in a subdomain. My other more secret plan for this blog is to turn it into a site to talk about my needlework hobby. You know, with a gallery and all that. Possibly a related theme (see Charlie Rocket’s blog header for a similar idea.) Needlework is my real passion, and I’ve been wanted to blog about it for a while.
Basically, jarofbees.net is going to be an outlet for all of my artsy endeavors, with some nattering about the German language on the side.

Digital Storytelling: “Digital Geschichtenerzählen.”
Irgendwann werde ich ein Blog Post ganz auf Deutsch schreiben und alle euch verwirren!

Almost everything we’ve read involving digital storytelling has mentioned how hard it is to define. All it is is storytelling (“the conveying of events in words, images and sounds often by improvisation or embellishment” – wikipedia) with digital media. I really don’t think it needs to be more defined than that. The problem is, if I use that definition of storytelling, it discounts most internet conversations, comments and such, because I don’t think someone’s opinion on someone else’s story conveys events. Well, except the event of them reading and (dis)agreeing with what one has to say. Not all of the sharing of content that goes on online is meant to tell a story. Is it only storytelling if one means to tell a story? That’s where the problem of defining it comes in for me. But so much of web 2.0 is opinions, I don’t think we should even try defining it. If someone wants to write a story on the web, they have tons of tools at their disposal to make their story happen, that’s all that matters.
The article also talks about how this should be used in schools. I agree, it should be taught. I would definitely take a class on digital storytelling.

Also, it’s about Google. I’ve posted before, Google is taking over. Google’s replacement of Netscape, and the fact that they’ll make a version of nearly every service Web 2.0 has to offer, it’s scary.
“While the jury’s still out on the success of any particular startup or approach, it’s clear that standards and solutions in these areas, effectively turning certain classes of data into reliable subsystems of the “internet operating system”, will enable the next generation of applications.”
EL OH EL Google Chrome.
Microsoft won’t be able to beat Google: “Microsoft’s business model depends on everyone upgrading their computing environment every two to three years. Google’s depends on everyone exploring what’s new in their computing environment every day.”
I am not at all against Google, I love their services as much as the next person, but yeah, they’ll soon take charge of everything. And do it splendidly.

On a different note, I found this wonderful photocomic two days ago, when I was linked to this specific strip. It’s talking about photocomics in particular, but I think it’s also a good job describing webcomics and digital storytelling in general versus conventional art.

Sowieso, when I first heard of this class my mind went to webcomics. They are one of the most popular ways to tell a story on the internet. Everyone and their brother has an idea for a comic, and places like comicgenesis.com allow almost anyone to publish one with no knowledge of code, no need to buy a domain at all. I have an idea for a webcomic. >.> This class may or may not see it revealed.
So, some of my favorite examples of this medium are

Girl Genius
Order of the Stick
Gunnerkrigg Court
xkcd
Questionable Content
Sinfest

There are countless others that I sometimes remember to check, but these are the ones I never forget.

The second thing that sprang to my mind was John Dies At The End, I’m not sure how true an example this is. It was a full horror novel released as a series on David Wong’s website from 2000 to 2006 (I think, he took that information off his website too.) It’s no longer available for free online as it was when I first read it, but it was professionally published late last year and is available on Amazon.

So then I thought about Lonelygirl15, something I haven’t watched myself but I have read about. It started as a series of video blogs featuring a girl introduced as Bree and her best friend Daniel. It turned out to be not a series of blogs, but a youtube TV show. I hear the plot gets outlandish later on.

This is all assuming that by “digital storytelling” we’re talking fiction. These are stories told on the internet, but perhaps with the exception of lonelygirl15, they’re not stories told with the internet. And they are not the story of someone’s real-life experiences, which I get the feeling is what I’m supposed to be looking for.
You can find a lot of neat stories in youtube serials and fake twitter accounts. Or real twitter accounts I suppose. Mine tells the story of someone who doesn’t like twitter but is just enough of an attention whore to use it daily now that she’s got one.

Of course, this blog right here is an excellent example of digital storytelling. Truly, the author is a genius. Or insane.

So I chose this one, which is called Snag. I liked the color scheme. I was delighted to find that I could change the title of the blog to an image and then replace the image with a logo of some sort, something that would have to be bee related. The process of doing so went like this (and may only work for this theme, but it might be somewhat helpful)

Blog > Dashboard > Appearance > Snag Options > Display type: Image

Create a logo or whatever you want in the header of your blahg. Save it “logo.png”

Then go into Cpanel > File manager > public_html > Blog > wp-content > themes >snag (or I suppose the name of your theme)> images

Upload your image there, overwrite the current “logo.png” file in the folder, and it should work.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering about the name of my blog (and you’re probably not) I’ve made an “about” page. It explains very little.

So the computer is a tool for augmenting intelligence. A tool for solving problems quickly. A tool that could solve all of our problems for us. I’m not sure if Engelbart could guess how much we would come to rely on these tools that can  indeed solve our most complex problems. Of course, “The power of the human intellect is really much the more important of the two.” A computer can only be as smart as the programmer. But, as we try to make it easier and easier to solve our problems…

It’s just a bit farther until skynet takes over and we’re all doomed.

Digital identity is an important topic to me. I am a person who lives mostly on the internet. I have a facebook which I check all too regularly. I’ve been a regular contributing member of a forum for two years, I greatly enjoy the community there and have made some excellent friends. “The connection between a personal cyber infrastructure and creativity and the realization of self in communication with others is VERY strong, and CRUCIAL.” I agree, and I’m very pleased to have a domain of my own.
I definitely agree about importance of identity markers, mentioned in No Digital Facelifts. It is impossible to feel like an individual on the internet without them. I feel much more like an individual interacting with people on the internet from my persona there than I do interacting on Blackboard with people I have actually met.

The theme of creativity occurs in both lectures. When Campbell spoke to our class he introduced a quote of Kay’s: “A computer is an instrument whose music is ideas.” He emphasized the fact that technology is not stuff. It’s not ipods or cell phones. It is a means for living. And people don’t understand that, and it is “crucial that we explore and understand how networks or communication work and constitute the self.”

I noticed that Campbell also mentions in both lectures that language is a technology. In Digital Facelifts it’s that the alphabet is as much a disruptive technology as the printing press, and then later mentions that the definition of cyber infrastructure could certainly be used to describe an alphabet. And he did rage to us about language being technology that occurred before the babyboomers, when that video claimed otherwise.

I really enjoyed both of these lectures, Gardner Campbell is a great and engaging speaker.