Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Good things

I attended my first Meetup event- a Women Who Code Hack Night thing. It was... interesting. There were more ladies in that room, interested in programming then I believe I've worked with in my career so far. Sadly I felt socially awkward, my laptop misbehaved, and I failed to actually "hack" on anything. But it was pleasant in an overall abstract way and I hope to attend again.

While it didn't come out this month, I have just recently stumbled across Professor Elemental's Father of Invention album and it is crazy good. Superior to all previous albums, in my opinion. There's no single song better then Fighting Trousers on this album, though there is a track featuring Mr. B-the-Gentleman-Rhymer. Listed below are my favorites:



You're Invited: The best part about Professor Elemental is how fun and happy and joyous his songs are. Good hearted!

Animal Ice Cream: The Professor has an abnormal interest with animals and it produces amazing things

You Remind Me of a Car: What's better then these breathy sexy, sexy lyrics? I quiver!

The Attic: A mysterious story! Reminds me of table top games...

Speaking of music, I just found on my camera a photo from Doug's CD exchanges from early January. I love my album artwork on this! The title of the playlist: Everything is Horrible. Adam's playlist is 'Unsolved Mysteries'

CD Swap Entries

The only sad thing is that I've failed the Month of Letters challenge... but that's something for another post. Was distracted with a new project... it's been too long since I've made a monster. You can see some in-progress shots below. A weighted paper holder is the core that I've been building around... just skinned the legs after I took the photo... the eyes are in the process of being painted... slow progress, but it's coming together. Destined for my desk at work when completed.

Paper Holding Monster : early stages

Paper Holding Monster : early stages

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Warning! There be boobies ahead!

How is February not over yet? I'm feeling quite overwhelmed and there's still more then a week left. Ugh.

Have returned from Seattle, which holds friends and family and is still quite nice. Saw the Amaluna Cirque du Soleil show while up there with good friend Trisha. I greatly enjoyed the acts, was intrigued by the engineering of the costumes, felt 'meh' about the music, and loathed the clowning, which is luckily only a small part of the show. Definitely recommend it if you can make it. Wont go into details about the acts (you should never know what you're getting into with a Cirque show!) but I will say that my most favoritest act was the man pole dancer. Not really a stripper pole dancer act, just a freakishly athletic man and a pole. Good times, good times.

Dr. Sketchy's was tonight Dr Sketchy's : 2/19/13 and the model had quite a get-up. Sadly she didn't keep most of it it on. Lacy skirts are so much fun to draw! All those fashion templates I copied from finally paying off!

Turnout was strong again, yay for them, boo for me. Placed third in the contest, yay. Next session is the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence which should be fun but no doubt will be even more crowded.

Dr Sketchy's : 2/19/13 | Dr Sketchy's : 2/19/13
I'm a bad person and entered both 20 minute sketches in the contest. The one on the right got 3rd place.

Dr Sketchy's : 2/19/13 The session started off rough... the model had a strong jaw and nose, elaborate makeup, and quite the crazy hairdo. Took a while to get into the groove... She was also mind bogglingly thin which was hard to capture and not look "wrong". I include 3 sketches that I consider border-line worthy of scanning because.... why not.

But once I got rolling, I was quite pleased with the results. Favorite sketch of the evening is below. Yes, she had heart shaped pasties on. She also had antlers draped around her neck which made for quite the awesome look...


Dr Sketchy's : 2/19/13

Again, I'll wishfully state that I'll get back to posting about crafts and code...
...some day...

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Papers! Papers everywhere!

Letter writing continues. Yesterday I received my first response back. There's some people kicking around the concept of some letter RP, which I'm ashamed to admit I have little faith in. It did however motivate me to dig around a horrendous number of boxes (we still haven't really tackled our basement full of boxes problem yet...) to find the results of my long-ago attempted round-robin story telling. Turns out they're still very delightful to read!

I survived Tahoe. Turns out I still remember how to downhill ski and I still don't know how to cross-country ski. It was a fun & educational trip but I don't think I'll be doing it many more times. Four hours in a car seems far more unbearable to me then four hours in a plane.

Scans, scans, scans... Here's some scans from Dr. Sketchy's on the 5th. The mermaid costume was impressive. I appreciate her nods to The Little Mermaid in her poses, despite her lack of red hair.

Mermaid Contest Entry 2 Mermaid Doodles Mermaid Contest Entry 1
I did not come near to winning the contest (she was just one of those kinda' judges, you know?) but at least I liked my entries. Contest theme: Mermaid in a Martini Glass. I've since mailed off the 2 entries to miscellaneous folks as part of the letter swap. I've given away all my good tea, clearly I'm hurting for content at this point ;) I keep meaning to pull together a zine about data structures but... not. Been busy, yo!

Saw Hansel & Grettle. Do not recommend. Am hoping to catch Warm Bodies and Beautiful Creatures in theater because I'm pathetic. Warm Bodies I at least enjoyed the book. Beautiful Creatures has great trailer music:
and a fun soundtrack:

Also, I played Lady Blackbird again. That happened. Yeah....

Lady Blackbird RPG : 2nd try



In closing, I am tired. I've been doing a lot and yet still not enough. One thing I know I'm not doing enough of now is exercise. My snazzy new Fitbit tells me so. ;)

Monday, February 4, 2013

Busy Month

Typical Jaya

'Sup

February has lots of things. I will be up skiing, I'll be up in Seattle, we'll be hosting an Oscar party, there's two Dr. Sketchy's, I'm attending my first conference ever via work and I'm participating in the Month of Letters challenge which means every not-Sunday or Monday the 18th I'm dropping something in the mail.

I'm also itching to sketch more since I accidentally went through my old collection of doodles... I was all prepared to rot my brain and waste my time on the Starcraft II : Heart of the Storm beta (went to Gamestop and got a key and everything!) but my game installation appears to be in a sad state and I can't play! :( So instead I spent Saturday night trying to get my groove back. Above is my tabletop character Jaya. Mel would give me a hard time for the continuing inconsistencies in character model but something is better then nothing. Shirt heavily referenced from this photo.