Miscellaneous

I've been spending a shit load of time at DeviatArt lately, to the point that I'm neglecting my blog even more than usual. One thing I've noticed a lot of people use is Livestream, to basically broadcast their desktop while they draw. This is, in my nerdy art-geek opinion, one of the coolest things ever. It's so cool that I even started doing it. The program is flash based, so naturally it's a bit unstable, but it does get the job done.

This causes some problems though. In order to get the word out past DeviantArt, I'm going to be forced to use twitter. It pains me to do so, but it must be done. I've gotten a lot of notice on DeviantArt as well, so it may be time to make one of those new-fangled facebook pages and whatnot.

No Myspace though; fuck Myspace.

Anyway, just so you can see what kind of stuff I work on, this is one better than average sample of what I work on in livestream. THis one is already about half colored, a large portion of which was done in a later broadcast.

I guess this means I need to get this site back up into better running shape, clean up some CSS, and se tup some proper links and widgets for the facebook/twitter/livestream bullshit.

This is my attempt to be 'too cool for all this social networking junk, but I'll join it anyway since all of you plebeians are on it' while trying to hide my starry eyed wonder at all this wicked cool technology. How am I doing?

Anyway, here are the new dorky links of note:

http://www.livestream.com/plognark

http://twitter.com/plognark

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Plognark/280296857134

It's a testament to the capabilities to irritate people that I've now had to employ two anti-spam modules for this site to keep the bastards at bay. I've barely got any readers, and the two randomized captchas I added have still blocked nearly 6000 spam entries. There are still some spambots that got through, so I had to employ an Akismet module to catch the rest. That's s hell of a lot of spam. I mean, seriously, how much Viagra and Cialis do we really need?

Since I've been somewhat inactive, here's a little 15 minute armored robot sketch to commemorate my continuing efforts to armor my site against spam.

Well, I sold my guitar. A family member asked me recently how my playing was going, since she was looking to buy one, and I said "I haven't touched that thing in like, five years" and I realized, right then and there, that I will never be a rock star, or even one of those assholes who plays sloppy chords while people are hanging around a campfire during the summer with a couple of beers.

You see, I have zero musical talent. And I finally realized it this week, and crushed my tiny dreams between my thumb and forefinger as I grabbed the cash my relative paid me for my old Axe.

So sad...

...

Ok, not really, I think I played it like, a dozen times, and could never even properly play a damn thing. We can't all be virtuosos. :(

I used most of the money to buy a set of new Sony Sony MDR7506 Large Diaphragm headphones for my B-day though, so at least my musical appreciation abilities will get a huge boost ^__^

Well, I've decided to shelf my forum for a while, since no one uses it, and it's just taking up space and cluttering an already cluttered site. It's not dead per se, just disabled.

Other than that I'm churning away at the next page for Steamvolt, which I hope to finish either some time this week or next Monday at the latest. It's one of the most complex things I've ever done, even though it probably won't look it in the end. I think my neurosis regarding tiny details is slowing me down, but what else is new, right?

So I just recently got back from my first *real* vacation ever. I was on a crusie ship, a veritable floating melanoma farm, surrounded by two factions of people I have nothing in common with: 21 year old drunken college students on spring break, and 60+ year old retired couples playing shuffle board.

The trip itself was good; got to see Mexico and Guatemala, the first time I've ever been out of the country (Canada doesn't count). Oddly enough, the most interesting part of the whole thing was the excursion trips by bus where I kind of got a chance to see how people in another country live from day to day. That part was even mroe interesting than Mayan ruins, old Spanish forts, and even a shallow depth mini sub cruising around a reef off of Cozumel.

I'm proud to say that I got my 'sea legs' within a day or two of being aboard the ship. Cruise ships are big, but not quite big enough that you don't feel some swaying and rocking, especially when tooling down the middle of the Gulf of mexico.

The problem now is that I want my sea legs to go the fuck away.

I've had dizziness and vertigo for DAAAAAYYYYYSSSSS now. Even sitting in a regular swivel chair in my cubicle makes me amazingly disoriented, and I feel like the whole earth is sliding sideways underneath me. I'm no nauseated at least, but every once in a while I sort of walk into a wall because I over-compensated for some kind of imaginary motion of the floor beneath me.

My wife had the exact opposite problem of course; she was dizzy on the ship, and fine as soon as she got off of it.

So anyway, the trip was good, if surreal and a little creepy from all the forced politeness, but these side effects are the opposite of fun.

I actually got a chance to do more art than I expected, including my interpretation fo a Red Cap above. You see, towards the end of the week aboard the ship we were starting to go insane. Once you sit down and find yourself enjoying the musical stylings of two Philipino lounge singers doing a Neil Diamond/Barbara Streisand tribute complete with fake witty banter and shitty synthesizer music, it's time to get the fuck off the boat.

Ok, so let's see here:

I used to play Shadowrun back in highschool, quite a bit actually. Fun game; it was the first real successful RPG that mixed high tech and magic into one interesting alternate-earth type setting. Good stuff. We geeked out with second edition, mostly.

Well, the database seems mostly stable and sorted now. I'm still in the slow, mind numbing process of rebuilding my galleries. And then I need to go and rebuild all the categorization for my several hundred blog entries. Oh yeah, and smilies. Those still aren't done. Huzzah.

Well, after completely decimating my first updated database and not backing things up like the genius that I am, I think things are now stable and rebuilt....mostly. Time will tell, I suppose...

And yes, I am working on a new theme and some other stuff. Sort of. I don't actually have much time to do anything, and I'm doing some freelance web design that will actually help pay bills, so the non-paying vanity stuff has to wait.