Scattered Focus

I keep starting things and then not quite finishing them. Or not doing that great of job if I get close enough to pretend to be done. I can't tell if it's the result of this general anxiety I've been feeling recently or the cause of it. Let's start with the positive and work my way down. Made some not-horrible bread recently and shared it at work. I let it raise too long and it sort of deflated a bit. I also didn't make as much as I had wished. Alas. Anyway- I called it Vdio Bread because it shares the color scheme of our recent product at work. The black is from the ever wonderful squid ink and the yellow from turmeric which was an interesting and new (to me) flavor. I also threw in a handful of other things but in the end the overall flavor was very mild. I wished both the color and the zing of the flavors was a bit stronger.

My sister gifted me this rad raptor particle board "skeleton" thing. I've never assembled one of them before (Adam comments he did a number of them in his youth) and it was a lot of fun. Hard not to be somewhat downed by following a pre-fab thing though... if only I had my scroll saw here! I'm hoping to put it in the back yard and entice my pea sproutlings to grow up/around it. Sadly my sproutlings have sprouted and passed their peek. Am really not in my gardening grove this year, despite my wishes.

The dino bones reminded me of my sister and spurred me on to finally make use of the scraps from her Christmas quilt. I came up one square short and made the most of it. I'm saddened that it took me all of an afternoon to do this piece work and that several days later it still sits in my basement, with no backing. We have company coming in two weekends so hopefully it'll be done by then to spruce up the basement, where they are staying. My first basement guests! (sister Lindsey doesn't count)

One of the reasons I'm having difficulty focusing is probably in part due the fantastic weather. It has been super nice lately (though today, Tuesday, the streak has been broken). This weekend I finally figured out how to mesh my desire to craft and my desire to enjoy the outdoors. Here you can see my diversions in the sun- the hammock, my camera tripod, and my sewing machine. All happily inhabiting our fantastic private back porch.

The tripod is because I've got a nagging urge to do some animation. Why? I don't know. I'm doing sewing projects, gardening projects, cooking projects... clearly what I need now is something else shinny to distract me. I'm not even good/trained at animating so why I think I should even try is beyond me.

Aaaaaanyway, I picked up some velum paper from Office Max and found that my hole punch made perfectly sized holes for some bullet casings I possess. (finding that out was an odd adventure through the basement). With the paper cut down and the casings in place it makes for a perfect flip book that can be reshuffled as needed. My Eadweard Muybridge: The Human and Animal Locomotion Photographs book also proved key to the process. And by key, I mean I basically copied one of the sets directly.

Dr Sketchy's : Girls on Bikes

Dr. Sketchy's this week was awesome. There were bikes. There were girls. There were girls on bikes. Not only was there some fantastic sketching to be had, but it was also a fundraiser for the AIDs Lifecycle ride one of our branch's founders is partaking in. A good cause and finally a chance to combine the joy of eating and sketching at the same time. Fresh grilled cheese! Yes!

I was rocken the short poses but my mojo ran out for the 10 minute ones.

Didn't win the contest but felt good about my entry. I never have a enough time to finish my coloring though, damn! Upcoming themes are apparently "Circus" and "Desert Princesses"?



I'm not sketching as much as I'd like (when am I ever?) but I do a little here and there. It helps to have material and/or motivation. Haven't had vivid dreams for a while, but this week they've popped up again. Vivid, and frequently unpleasant. I think it has something to do with high temperatures... anyway- dream from the start of this week.

I was a jetpack rental place. I had visited it at some point earlier and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was renting a pack for a brief period of time before the start of work one day, taking it up above a hill and looking over a forest. It was so lovely... There was a sunset/sunrise with purple clouds. I wanted to take a panorama photo of what I saw with my cellphone, so I fumbled with my phone. Every time I took my hand off the left controller to take a photo I started to fall from the sky. I'd switch back to the controller and rise back up, and then fall back down to the ground again when I again went for a photo. Eventually I ran out of fuel and slowly sank back to the ground... ...it was sad

Snow? In April!?!

I swear, Colorado needs to be severely reprimanded. It snowed. A lot. In April. That is simply not acceptable in my book. During my vacation. I wish there was someone I could formally complain to. I was in Colorado this last weekend because my cousin was getting married. Good on him- my grandmother was due for a wedding and my branch of the family certainly wasn't tracking to do so any time soon. The bride was a lovely lady who ran around barefoot for most of the reception and reportedly wears miss-matched socks. I welcome her into the fold. The wedding was lovely, the ceremony short and to the point, the DJ fantastic, and my branch of the family quickly liquored up into a frenzy. There were many things done, few of them caught on film (thankfully?). The evening ended in log rolling. You should ask me about it in person some time. Or Adam. It was quite a scene. Seeing family was fantastic and Colorado proved to be quite lovely. It was only on the last day, Monday, that Adam and I spent alone in Denver that was ridiculous. I can't count the number of times Adam just looked out the window and said "It's snowing" this this awed yet slightly horrified voice. Of course, he was drunk from the brewery visiting pretty early so that's probably not saying much. In-between visiting a crazy-good Cuban sandwhich place and The Great Divide brewing company, Adam and I visited the Denver Natural History museum which is WAY cooler then either of us expected it to be. Great taxidermy! Very dynamic displays! Amazing rigging of dinosaur bones! I would recommend it! It lacks the gloss & openness of the Japanese or Paris NHMs but what it does, it does well. Reminded me the Chicago NHM in terms of quality dioramas. More pictures from the trip can be found in this Flickr set.

Our flight getting back was delayed several hours by snow, didn't get to bed till at least 2:30 in the morning. Woke up the next day and managed to make it to the Sigur Ros show that night. Worst crowd I've endured in a long time. Horrible, horrible crowd. So much talking! And stupidity! But the music was great and the set design lovely. There were these beautiful incandescent lights scattered about the stage at varying heights which not only looked cool but also illuminated the stage without the need of spotlights. This video gives a good idea of what it was like.

Have been reading the Kabuki comic series. A++, would recommend. Now if only I had more time to read the second half of it...

Look. Listen. Watch. Read.

The first Dr. Sketchy's this month featured the delightful Randal and Daisy (a fellow Dr. Sketchy's artist!) with the theme April in Paris. Great costumes and great poses makes makes for happy sketches. Be warned that there's sketches of a lady in mild undress- consider the following mildly NSFW.

Despite my near inappropriate enthusiasm for Randal as a model, I spent a good deal of my time sketching Daisy because she had a superb outfit and figure that I couldn't pass up. Red hair and a corset that fits and is flattering! Yay! Randal's starched collar and swallow-tailed coat were also admirable. Too many pretty things too look at all at once! I wound up not entering the contest this time because I was too happy with my sketches to sully with flair. Almost all the sketches are nicely laid out by them selves on the colored construction paper, making them ideal for future letter sending.

    I also want to mention that a coworker of mine- a one Emily- joined me and it made me incredibly happy. I believe she had a good time and will return again. If there's one problem I've been having at my new job, it's making friends. I think it turns out the music industry attracts a lot of cool people, of which I am soundly not.

Speaking of being horribly uncool, let me take this moment to mention that I've continued to listen to Professor Elemental's new album and it continues to make me happy. Here's another track that's great (that I didn't link to last itme):

Working my way out of the uncool section, but still questionable, is a track from Savant's that I've been enjoying. The lyrics being almost entirely composed of the line "the horrors":

And finally I absolutely must share some new Toxic Avenger that I found. It itself isn't new, just new to me. There's something about how he weaves together tunes that really gets me! Angst Four is the new track (which I find calming), not to be confused with Angst One which I find vaguely stressful (but in a good way!)

In other news the rest of this month will be fleshed out with movies and shows. Room 237, Sigur Ros, Computer Chess, Much Ado About Nothing (new Joss movie!). I'll also hopefully be making it to Mary Robinette Kowal's book signing. I just devoured her latest- Without a Summer (Glamourist Histories). I keep meaning to do a post specifically about her series. In short though, it's awesome. It reads like candy. It makes me happy. The main character is 30 years old and has a healthy romantic relationship, which is the sort of thing I want to read about. The way the author describes the magic makes me think of programming.

In closing, things have been going mostly well. Except my tabletop character spent too much of last session stuck in a chair getting yelled at.

So happy I could cry

In case you hadn't heard, Jurassic Park was released this last Friday in 3D. I went to see it by myself tonight (Saturday April 6th). By the time the credits had finished rolling, tears were streaming down my face. It is hard to express, even to myself, how profound of impact that movie had on my youth.

There were collectable trading cards for the movie and I remember buying pack after pack of them (my sisters did as well to a lesser extent) at the dime store my grandmother worked at in Kiel, Wisconsin. I remember picking out all the cards with the concept art and sketching from it. This photo in particular really had a huge impact on how I drew. I watched and read all that I could about the special effects of that film and then later the field in general- almost the only non-fiction subject I've ever read recreationally.

So rarely does my past and present self so strongly agree on something, but the feeling of "This is awesome" was overwhelming in the theater and exactly as I remembered it from all those years ago. Sure, there were a number of goofs that were shockingly obvious now but they didn't detract from anything. What I never appreciated in my youth but I strongly saw this time was what a fabulous job the movie does at providing positive female role models. And not just female ones- normally I hate on main characters but Dr. Grant is a pretty great dude. And I vividly recalled (and still sympathise with) the sadness of wanting to find Muldoon attractive but being oh so repelled by his shorts and socks.

I came close to crying during the movie several times (that first scene with the brontosaurus!) and I'm not exactly sure what caused the tears during the credits but... there's a good number of happy things in my youth that I can connect to this film.

My beloved aunties, who took my sister Kelly and I to see it. (Lindsey was too little to see it. Ha!)

The fact that it is tied to a great book and reading was one of my few joys in life back then.

New reference material and fresh ideas on how to draw dragons! (another one of my joys in life back then)

This... hope. This idea that when I grew up... there was this job out there that I could see myself doing and being so happy about doing. Happy and proud. Something that could take the mess that was my imagination and maybe find use in it and maybe share it with the world. Maybe if I tried real hard, I could be a special effects artist.

Sadly, I did not go on to become a special effects artist. But I am a computer engineer and it is clear to me how I got here, starting there.
Thanks, Jurassic Park.

The Basement

In October we moved to a lovely little house that we're renting in the Mission. There is a dark, dank, low ceilinged basement which Adam has generously "given" over to me to do with as I wish. Of the two rooms, I originally claimed the larger one till flooding and ants chased me out of it. Now I'm in the smaller section, near the door, with the window. Not bad. The whole "unpacking" thing still hasn't finished and I've not enough carpet to cover the floor... but despite that, I have begun to "move in" and make the space feel more like my own.

I'm quite fond of my growing wall 'o things. Pictures, a skull, some bullet bugs, fabric creatures, things. Since the basement wall is unfinished I feel no qualms about sticking a hundred and one nails into it. The only thing holding me up is my lack of frames (apparently only Ikea has non-tacky yet still cheap frames! Curses! I had hoped not to need to return so soon!) and the knowledge that I want to have some sort of ... useful tool hanging "things" above the desk. I've ideas & supplies, just not the time to pull it together.

Having my sewing machine out is pleasing, along with all my books and thread available. My fabric and yarn collections are still abandoned in the other room, which needs to be corrected. I've been making good use of the desk though, cluttering it up with pins and soldering supplies. My old iMac is practically useless (I can upgrade no further) but it does at least play music and let me search for reference photos. You can't really tell from the top photo, but beyond the ironing board (which I was using to iron plastic, thread, beads, and wire together to make wings!) is my lovely futon bed for those who are bave enough to stay over.

If we owned the place I'd put forward efforts to actually improve the basement (like finishing the fucking walls!) but we don't and so I can only hope to cover and work around its "quirks". One thing that isn't horrible is the metal pipe? that runs over the wall and on the ceiling for the SINGLE outlet in the room. Sticking monsters to it via magnets makes me happy.

So, yeah. Some horrible photos of my "crafting cave".

Other things: I've been playing the Starcraft Campaign! I <3 Abathur! Expect to see related crafts soon. I had my butt handed to me at Dr. Sketchy's last week, could not get in the grove. I appear to be momentarily tapped out on the letter writing front. Need to recharge. Have been crafting a magnetic wall butterfly monster... thing... educational, but it's not quite coming together as I had hoped. I bought the thumb drive of stock poses from Senshi Stock but haven't found the chance to sketch anything from it yet. Am excited to do so at some point. Went to Angel Island for the first time and loved it. Saw the movie Stoker. It was... kind of fun? Watched Strage Days again, it was also rather fun. Both have horrible dark parts to them though so I can't broadly recommend. Also saw Pitch Perfect which was delightfully silly & fun. Have been quite enchanted with one of the songs from it. I was compelled to sketch the scene it's from and you can listen to it below.

Doing Good

Dr. Sketchy's tonight! Woot! Disclaimer: images scattered through post have nothing to do with following topic other then the Sisters falling under the banner of "doing good"--

I really enjoyed attending W3Conf last month. It was an ideal first conference since there was only one track and the subjects were very focused. One of the talks that really struck me, and those I was with, was Léonie Watson's "Design like you give a damn: Practical accessibility for web pros" (which is available on YouTube, 40 min long). The talk itself was rather simple but the Q&A afterwards was informative and the subject itself sort of startling. My coworker, Matt, and I both found the title of the talk appropriately... harsh? Why of course we should make our site not shitty for those who might need to navigate it differently.

This last Friday was my first Hack Day at Rdio (got a sweet t-shirt out of it!) and I happily poked at the issue of accessibility. Turns out doing it "right" is hard... and rather stupid because the ARIA spec uses IDs for a lot of stuff, which isn't great for reusable components. Yes, yes, obviously something can be figured out. But for a one-day-at-work project, wrestling with that was more then I wanted to do. Some take-away thoughts:

• OMG use alt="" if your image is just decorative! If it's not, put some damn text in the attribute.
• VoiceOver on Mac might not be the hottest screen reader around, but it's so easy to run you have no excuse not to at least try
• Using buttons or divs with with just a background image for a button is lovely and totally not accessible to screen readers. The aria-label="Button Name" and role="button" attributes are so easy and make a big difference!
• Handling focus with popup divs is not instantly obvious (I flailed for most of the end Friday with it, got it working for < 2 minutes on Monday, and cannot figure out how I did so nor return to that state since)

Because it was just a one-day hack, no code is really fit to be rolled out... but it's something that will probably be coming soon.

Jumping topics- Dr. Sketchy's was a joy tonight. Our models were several of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, which is my second time drawing them and the fourth time they've modeled for Dr. Sketchy's. I'm thrilled that I got first place in the contest tonight, whose theme was "Draw the new pope". My entry was the following image:

I used construction paper today because I knew the Sisters would have lots of black & white... totally wasn't prepared for the amount of pink though. Luckily a kind lady next to me let me borrow hers. The gentlemen to my right (a former art teacher?) also helped me out with drawing some sparkles. Another lady lent me her light blue pencil, which I sadly failed to return before she left. What I'm trying to say is that everyone at Dr. Sketchy's is awesome. Also, I must give a shout-out for one of the sponsors Utrecht- the paper (toned gray) and pencils (graphite aquarelle) I won tonight are exciting and I'm looking forward to using them soon. I also won a lovely lei which looks perfect wrapped around my bun.

And just so everyone's aware of it, the Sisters do a big Easter even in Dolores Park every year. They have posted the event calendar and it should be noted that the Hunky Jesus Contest starts at 3:45. I'm not sure if it's my kinda' event, but I've heard good things.

In closing, I just wanted to add that I've finally found a use for my pile o' Dr. Sketchy's doodles (aside from scanning them). The Month of Letters may be over (I bombed the last week) but I am still writing letters (at a far, far slower paces). For several letters now I've been using sketch pages as stationary and winding my words around model's form, scribbled across the page. It hurts less then tossing the scraps and yet gets them off the desk & outa' the house, which Adam approves of.