It's strange...
Arsenal just lost at home to Liverpool for the first time in over a decade, my team is probably the most vulnerable it's been in 15 years. It's been a long, long week, and yet I feel pretty darn pleased with myself right now. G'night everyone :)
I discovered today...
... that you get to a certain age, and wearing a baseball cap backwards just looks wrong.
I do it anyway.
I do it anyway.
That time of year again...
... now I get to start watching Star Trek: TNG over from season 1. It's been about a year since I've gone through the show in sequence and I'm so excited!
I wonder whether...
I was looking around my apartment today at my action figures (Superman, The Thing, Asterix, Obelix, Conan), and I had to wonder whether a girl walking in and seeing them littered about experienced the female equivalent of what I do when I walk into a girls room and see Cabbage Patch Dolls and My Little Pony's adorning the landscape.
Still, they don't make My Little Pony's as awesome as this, do they!? Someone HOLD ME!
Still, they don't make My Little Pony's as awesome as this, do they!? Someone HOLD ME!
How to build your own gaming PC, by Eurogamer
For anyone who builds (or has ever tried) to build their own gaming PC, I present this amazing piece of work from Eurogamer on the subject.
Highlights:
Highlights:
Look, your consoles play games just fine. Some of them do other things as well, like streaming movies or facilitating identity theft. You don't need a gaming PC.
1. Should you do this?Read the rest here, seriously, it'll put a smile on your face.
Probably not. It's sort of complicated. Take this questionnaire.
Do you know how a computer works?
A. Yes. The hard drive is for long-term storage, RAM is for short-term data, and they both connect to a motherboard, which... [You continue to recite an accurate outline of a computer's workings even though I have obviously stopped listening.]
B. Yes. I type the thing into the Google, and my internet goes to the thing.
C. Yes. I push the lever down, and a few minutes later, my potato waffles are done.
For those who answered anything other than "A," put down the hammer and nails - you are not going to be building a PC today. The fact that you thought you'd be using a hammer and nails should have been a red flag.
Ice Cream and Marshmallows
You know those task lists you create in MS Word, or Zimbra, or Outlook that track what it is you're currently working on in the office? Well mine just blew right past comically long. I need to get a handle on things.
At present work is moving a mile a minute. Sure, I complain, but I'm not sure I'd have it any other way at the moment. Besides, I'm still trying to prove to myself I can actually do this, actually wrap my head around properly managing and organizing what needs to be er, managed and organized. It'll pay off personally and professionally. Maybe
I was thinking last week that I need to start writing a journal, mainly because I hardly ever blog about anything deeply personal here. And lets be honest, in a hundred years when I long gone people are gonna want, nay, need to know how I spent my valuable lying around time.
I discovered ice cream with marshmallows in it last week. I've had 3 and a half TUBS of the stuff this week. That can't be good.
I've also been meaning to start writing a series of posts about roMANce Movies for Guys (non-working title), but for one reason or another I haven't got around it to it. My list so far reads thus:
Oh hey! I had a haircut this weekend (in hopeful anticipation of the resurrection of my estranged dating life). This news is in and of itself not really significant except that it was a "proper" haircut performed by a professional, and not one that was self inflicted. All told I think it went well... except that my barber, a friendly man by the name of Mr Ed (I kid you not!) took to cleaning up the fringes of my haircut with a straight edge, and my poor delicate skin just does not take kindly to the touch of the blade.
Finally, I recently started watching the TV show Frasier, frankly, it's brilliant. I'd caught an episode here and there in the past, but never really kept track of things.
At present work is moving a mile a minute. Sure, I complain, but I'm not sure I'd have it any other way at the moment. Besides, I'm still trying to prove to myself I can actually do this, actually wrap my head around properly managing and organizing what needs to be er, managed and organized. It'll pay off personally and professionally. Maybe
I was thinking last week that I need to start writing a journal, mainly because I hardly ever blog about anything deeply personal here. And lets be honest, in a hundred years when I long gone people are gonna want, nay, need to know how I spent my valuable lying around time.
I discovered ice cream with marshmallows in it last week. I've had 3 and a half TUBS of the stuff this week. That can't be good.
I've also been meaning to start writing a series of posts about roMANce Movies for Guys (non-working title), but for one reason or another I haven't got around it to it. My list so far reads thus:
- Karate Kid II (stop snickering in the back)
- Solaris (the 2002 Soderbergh flick)
- The Fountain
- I'm tempted to ad Superman: The Movie.
Oh hey! I had a haircut this weekend (in hopeful anticipation of the resurrection of my estranged dating life). This news is in and of itself not really significant except that it was a "proper" haircut performed by a professional, and not one that was self inflicted. All told I think it went well... except that my barber, a friendly man by the name of Mr Ed (I kid you not!) took to cleaning up the fringes of my haircut with a straight edge, and my poor delicate skin just does not take kindly to the touch of the blade.
Finally, I recently started watching the TV show Frasier, frankly, it's brilliant. I'd caught an episode here and there in the past, but never really kept track of things.
A major "life transition"
Recently I've had to start coping with one of the most difficult "life transitions" I've ever known. It came unexpectedly and I wasn't at all prepared for it, but so far I'm coping fairly well. I am of course referring to the fact that the "confirm" command on my new Asian PlayStation 3 is mapped to the circle button instead of the Western standard "X", which in turn is mapped to cancel out... jarring stuff.
For some this means nothing, but to me it's been a major change, one that's difficult to adjust to after more than a decade and a half of doing things the other way round. Commands I once performed using muscle memory alone have become labored exercises forcing me to stop-think-execute. It would be great to be able to carry this philosophy into my day to day. As Obadiah Stane put it, "no more of this ready, fire, aim nonsense".
I'm stealing time out from my lunch hour to post, I must confess I really feel like firing up my PS3 (brand new, courtesy of the bro) to play some Mass Effect 2, but I think I'll settle for preparing a ham sandwich and some music.
PS. Is the background of my blog a tiled image of a frog for anyone else?
For some this means nothing, but to me it's been a major change, one that's difficult to adjust to after more than a decade and a half of doing things the other way round. Commands I once performed using muscle memory alone have become labored exercises forcing me to stop-think-execute. It would be great to be able to carry this philosophy into my day to day. As Obadiah Stane put it, "no more of this ready, fire, aim nonsense".
I'm stealing time out from my lunch hour to post, I must confess I really feel like firing up my PS3 (brand new, courtesy of the bro) to play some Mass Effect 2, but I think I'll settle for preparing a ham sandwich and some music.
PS. Is the background of my blog a tiled image of a frog for anyone else?
The Magic of Moonlighting
Moonlighting is an amazing show. A fast talking, pre-Die Hard Bruce Willis, a gorgeous post-Last Picture Show Cybill Shepherd, both engaging in private eye hijinks backed by awesome 80's music and a fist full o' cheese.
I loved the show as a kid, but I haven't really been able to watch reruns since then as pretty much no one seems interested in syndicating it (surprising since Bruce Willis was the male lead and the show was a hit at the time).
Anyway, I recently managed to pick up all five seasons on Amazon for under $50, and am quickly making my way through seasons 1 and 2, loving every minute of it.
What I hadn't realised back then was just how tight the writing on the show was, sure the cases don't really matter, but they're always interesting, and are almost always great ways to put Maddie and David in unexpected situations.
Willis' comic timing in particular is excellent, and I truly wish more directors would cast him in comedic roles, the Fifth Element was a great showcase, but see the criminally forgotten and underrated Hudson Hawk if you don't believe the man has an eye for comedy.
Now, on to dinner.
I loved the show as a kid, but I haven't really been able to watch reruns since then as pretty much no one seems interested in syndicating it (surprising since Bruce Willis was the male lead and the show was a hit at the time).
Anyway, I recently managed to pick up all five seasons on Amazon for under $50, and am quickly making my way through seasons 1 and 2, loving every minute of it.
What I hadn't realised back then was just how tight the writing on the show was, sure the cases don't really matter, but they're always interesting, and are almost always great ways to put Maddie and David in unexpected situations.
Willis' comic timing in particular is excellent, and I truly wish more directors would cast him in comedic roles, the Fifth Element was a great showcase, but see the criminally forgotten and underrated Hudson Hawk if you don't believe the man has an eye for comedy.
Now, on to dinner.
Visions of the Gods.
I'm not entirely sure when this became an "art only" blog, it was never intended as such, it's always been my intention to write about the things that interest me day in and day out, so I'm going back to that.
That said, this new post is in fact, art related.
A little while back I decided that if I wanted to finish a project I've been thinking about for the past 12 years, then I'd have to actually start working on it (shock, awe). As such I've recently started work again on a project that I've called, for a long time now, Visions of the Gods, a name which barely seems appropriate these days as the story and tone have changed quite a bit, but a name which I'll probably end up keeping just because I'm too lazy to think of anything else.
Visions of the Gods or "Visions" for short, started out as something of an African take on Lord of the Rings, of course, this was before I decided I wasn't smart enough to attempt that. Over the years Visions has changed multiple times as I tried to figure out what sort of representation African comics and Nigerian comics needed.
There was a lot of stopping and starting along the way, and I've finally come to the decision that instead of working on what I thought was needed, I should just work the way I wanted (what a novel idea!). The result is hopefully something that mixes pulp and whimsy in equal measure, my two favorite things you see, I'm also hoping to make it an ongoing web series, posting pages sporadically as I finish them.
I've got an old script from about 2 or 3 years ago that I'm using as a spine, but I'm kind of winging it, and I'm trying to enjoy the process and learn from it.
From this point on, I'm going to be posting as much as I can about the process of writing and drawing Visions, in an attempt to chronicle the difficulty of creating a comic for any other artists struggling with similar endeavours. I'll also be talking about the decisions I make with my art and writing, why I make them, and it'll hopefully also be a cool little visual log of how my art changes over the course of the project.
Here's a panel from the page I'm currently working on.
That said, this new post is in fact, art related.
A little while back I decided that if I wanted to finish a project I've been thinking about for the past 12 years, then I'd have to actually start working on it (shock, awe). As such I've recently started work again on a project that I've called, for a long time now, Visions of the Gods, a name which barely seems appropriate these days as the story and tone have changed quite a bit, but a name which I'll probably end up keeping just because I'm too lazy to think of anything else.
Visions of the Gods or "Visions" for short, started out as something of an African take on Lord of the Rings, of course, this was before I decided I wasn't smart enough to attempt that. Over the years Visions has changed multiple times as I tried to figure out what sort of representation African comics and Nigerian comics needed.
There was a lot of stopping and starting along the way, and I've finally come to the decision that instead of working on what I thought was needed, I should just work the way I wanted (what a novel idea!). The result is hopefully something that mixes pulp and whimsy in equal measure, my two favorite things you see, I'm also hoping to make it an ongoing web series, posting pages sporadically as I finish them.
I've got an old script from about 2 or 3 years ago that I'm using as a spine, but I'm kind of winging it, and I'm trying to enjoy the process and learn from it.
From this point on, I'm going to be posting as much as I can about the process of writing and drawing Visions, in an attempt to chronicle the difficulty of creating a comic for any other artists struggling with similar endeavours. I'll also be talking about the decisions I make with my art and writing, why I make them, and it'll hopefully also be a cool little visual log of how my art changes over the course of the project.
Here's a panel from the page I'm currently working on.
Day 15 TGBE
Day 15 of The Great Beard Experiment, in which I attempt to leave my beard to grow long and luxurious, unfettered and untouched by blade of flame. I'm curious to see how full it'll get, or if my regular "leave it for two weeks" length is the maximum achievable sproutage.
In other news, I'll post some art in a wee bit. Just working on a layout for me dad that's proving a little tough at the final stages. It's a Noah's ark "painting" which was fun until I started to draw the animals. TOO MANY OF THEM! Noah really should have just put them in U-Haul's instead.
In other news, I'll post some art in a wee bit. Just working on a layout for me dad that's proving a little tough at the final stages. It's a Noah's ark "painting" which was fun until I started to draw the animals. TOO MANY OF THEM! Noah really should have just put them in U-Haul's instead.