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July 30, 2003
Secret Message #11: MacGuffin
Some of you are expecting an Easter Egg today, but I'm empty. Empty, I tell you. Consider this post a MacGuffin, a total blank of little importance, in my giant Easter Egg hunt.
I wanted to post a link to the advice goddess because I'd read one of her pieces in the paper the other day. Some woman wrote that she was in no way romantically interested in her husband but instead had the hots for Frodo Baggins. I wanted to find that piece on the site but couldn't find it. So I don't think I'll post a link to the advice goddess after all.
[July 31, 2003 Update: Scott, you angel! Thank you for the link I was trying so desperately to find.]
There were a number of other things I could have posted, things about which I could have written, but frankly, I'm a bit burned out with all this posting-on-deadline kind of thing, and if you don't think I actually adhered to any posting deadlines, you obviously weren't paying attention to my posting schedule.
I'm seriously considering a vacation from the internet in August. Seriously.
*Sigh*
You know what? I lied.
There is an Easter Egg.
Posted by April at 10:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 24, 2003
Dance
I miss dancing. I don't mean the kind of dancing done at nightclubs or ballrooms; I was never a club hopping type, and me dancing in dress shoes and a long gown simply has too much comedy, utter humiliation and pain potential. No, the kind of dancing I miss involves a dance studio, a mess of mirrors on the walls, a great dance teacher, and lots of sweaty people in leotards, all lined up and looking in the same direction.
I was never much into exercising, working out at some gym on a bunch of heavy metal machines; like the ballroom dancing scene, that has way too much comedy, utter humiliation and pain potential for a klutz like me. That, and it's too much like work, as in a manual labor kind of work, and frankly that isn't something I would ever do voluntarily.
But dancing in a classroom environment—that, I could do. If I sign up for a class and am suddenly presented with a quarter or semester schedule of classes to go to, then I have my exercise regiment all settled. I have always thrived in a classroom environment, and dancing is no exception; I feel compelled to do well, so I attend every session and do my best, whether it's jazz dance or hip hop.
Amazingly enough, my clumsiness disappears in the dance class. I'm so focused on so many things—my center of gravity, my spot, the placement of my limbs—that it's hard not to be graceful for once. I'll admit that my first few classes were disasters—I actually had a teacher call me The Wild Child once because my movements were all out of control—but for the most part, I do well enough that I'm pointed out as a "good example."
Anyway, I miss dancing. I've been thinking about signing up for a dance class in the fall so I can get lean and limber again. It's been years, though, since my last class... which may mean another wild child phase, not to mention a lot of comedy, utter humiliation and pain potential.
I don't know why that matters so much; I live with that potential every single day of my life anyway, no matter what I do.
Posted by April at 10:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 23, 2003
No Wonder I'm Indecisive
Thanks to Suzanne's link, I took this test and got this:
April, you are one of those rare individuals who are perfectly "balanced" in both your hemispheric tendencies and your sensory learning preferences. However, there is both good news and bad news.
A problem with hemispheric balance is that you will tend to feel more conflict than someone who has a clearly established dominance. At times the conflict will be between what you feel and what you think but will also involve how you attack problems and how you perceive information. Details which will seem important to the right hemisphere will be discounted by the left and vice versa, which can present a hindrance to learning efficiently.
In the same vein, you may have a problem with organization. You might organize your time and/or space only to feel the need to reorganize five to ten weeks later.
On the positive side, you bring resources to problem-solving that others may not have. You can perceive the "big picture" and the essential details simultaneously and maintain the cognitive perspective required. You possess sufficient verbal skills to translate your intuition into a form which can be understood by others while still being able to access ideas and concepts which do not lend themselves to language.
Your balanced nature might lead you to second-guess yourself in artistic endeavors, losing some of the fluidity, spontaneity and creativity that otherwise would be yours.
With your balanced sensory styles, you process data alternately, at times visually and other times auditorially. This usage of separate memories may cause you to require more time to integrate information or re-access it. When presented with situations which force purely visual or purely auditory learning, increased anxiety is likely and your learning efficiency will decrease.
Your greatest benefit is that you can succeed in multiple fields due to the great plasticity and flexibility you possess.
Me, balanced? Somehow that doesn't seem right.
Posted by April at 11:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 22, 2003
Reality Bites
Is it me, or is the number of reality shows on TV growing exponentially? I remember when the only reality shows used to be People's Court and Cops, but now there's Last Comic Standing and The Restaurant, not to mention Cheaters, Blind Date and For Love or Money. I honestly don't see the attraction. Truly, I don't.
People who love reality shows complain that sitcoms and dramas are contrived. Well, duh. Of course they're contrived; they are plotted and written, and that takes planning and thought. Writers have to think about their characters' motivations, their backgrounds and their arcs. Directors have to think about how best to shoot and light the scenes, how best to bring all the elements together. Actors have to flesh out their characters and give them life and depth. All of that takes craft. Done well, your suspension of disbelief is strong, and you lose yourself in the world created for you. So of course it's contrived.
What are reality shows compared to that? First of all, there's very little craft involved; elements that would never by nature be found in the same arena are suddenly and sloppily thrown together, and the ending is unpredictable—completely unpredictable. That, of course, is the attraction for people who watch reality shows, the unpredictability—that is, until some angry Cheater pulls out a gun and starts shooting folks in anger.
Hey, have you seen Cheaters? It's bound to happen.
See, most of the people featured in these shows aren't exactly the cream of the crop. H.E.'s words for them are (to be said in a television announcer's deep voice): "When good trailer trash goes bad!" But that's because he believes the casting calls for these things involve dragging a $100 bill through the trailer park. Me, I see these people as media whores, people trying to get their 15 minutes of fame, in the worst way possible—and I do mean the worst way possible.
Why do the networks make so many reality shows? Because people lap it up and because reality shows are cheap to make. No writers to pay, no directors to hire, no actors with whom to negotiate back end deals. The audience is getting cheated out of a show made with actual craft and real funding. For the same amount of advertising dollars and a fraction of the usual production cost, the audience gets Christians and lions, bums fighting in the streets, a handful of no-name folks at whom you wouldn't look twice while walking on the street, all placed in unnatural situations and made to perform for the audience like a bunch of lab rats beneath glass. Sure, you get unpredictability, but it's still just as much "contrived," only this time in the "artificial" sense of the word and not in the "create in an artistic manner" sense.
I write this only because I was once criticized for liking Frasier and for finding Big Brother boring as hell (why should I care about all these whiny, conniving people anyway?)—that, and someone close to me writes television screenplays for a living (because reality shows are all the rage, it's ten times harder for that person to get a good project going).
If you like reality shows, that's fine; it's your life, and you hold the remote. Me, I'm boycotting them. I want the networks to actually work at entertaining me and to give me a story that can engage my mind for half an hour to an hour or so. I want good fiction brought to life, to enthrall me and to teach me, to move me and to make me laugh. I don't want a fake "reality" played by non-actors acting "natural" in front of a camera for love, for money or for fame.
Because frankly, the reality in reality shows bites. Just bites.
Posted by April at 11:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 18, 2003
Freebie #1: Braided Rings Pixel Pattern
I finally decided to make my own pixel patterns, and here is my first one:
Feel free to make use of it for your own projects. It looks like this as a background:
And like this as a cloth:
Here is the original artwork that inspired it:
Posted by April at 10:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 17, 2003
Too Muggy For This Muggle
I hate weather like this—stifling heat and humidity, mugginess abound. I drove home cranky yesterday and developed a headache simply sitting in the car and baking in the heat, and the crankiness didn't go away.
California isn't supposed to be like this. Dry desert sunny warmth is the norm, and I have no idea where all this moisture is coming from. It makes me wonder how people on the east coast survive on a day-to-summer-muggy-day basis. They're all crazy, simply crazy. That's like living your life in someone else's armpit.
So I'm excusing myself from writing anything meaningful tonight. The heat just won't let my mind stay engaged for very long. All I want to do is lie down in front of the fan and sleep.
Posted by April at 10:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 16, 2003
I Want My Own House in a Nice Neighborhood
For five minutes now I've been trying to move into a small town. It's been around for a while, and I remember the first time I saw it years ago, looking around the communities, checking out the neighborhoods, drooling over the houses. I even drew up a plan for my own house, dreaming that I'd move in one day.
Tonight, I dug up that old house plan. It was right there on my hard drive, so I signed up to join the neighborhood and uploaded my home sweet home. I'm still waiting for confirmation, but here is what my house looks like:
Now if only I can figure out where to put the furniture...
Posted by April at 10:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 15, 2003
Switch!
I've never felt the need to switch, as I'm the type of person who likes and can work in both Mac and PC, but for a long time now I've been dying to switch, and tonight, after setting things up to my liking, I've been able to do just that. In other words, my PowerMac G3 is back in use, and I didn't have to set up another desk, monitor, keyboard and mouse to do it—woohoo!
Speaking of switching, I long ago switched my preference in graphic programs from Paint Shop Pro to Photoshop, simply because I used Photoshop more often at work, but Parl and other owners of Paint Shop Pro never need to make a similar switch. PSP users can still achieve Multiplicity without Photoshop. Here's how:
When copying the images into a single file, use Ctrl-L to paste as a new layer. When creating masks, you can find the Create Mask icon at the top of the layers palette, about the third icon from the left. Mouse over the icons for tooltips to make sure you have the right one; it looks like a happy drama mask. Newly created masks are black by default, which makes the layer you're working on disappear. So, to edit the mask, use Ctrl-K or select Edit Mask from the Masks menu above. Select a white paintbrush, and you can paint your Woody back in, which is a niftier way of doing it than in the original tutorial. Score!
See? No switching needed.
The lesson for today is the following: the grass isn't really greener on the other side of the fence, but if you think it is and you find yourself always yearning to be on the other side, straddle the fence and keep a foot in both yards. I guarantee two things if you do this: one, you'll have the best of both worlds; and two, your crotch will hurt.
But it's a good hurt, I swear.
Posted by April at 10:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 14, 2003
Yanking Doodles #5: Polar Bear in a Snowstorm
Posted by April at 11:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 12, 2003
Photoshop Tips and Tricks #3: Multiplicity
Shortly after I wrote my first Photoshop tutorial, Broch sent me an e-mail with one line: "Quick question, exactly HOW do you do this in Photoshop???" The answer was simple enough. All you need is a tripod and, well, a camera.
Silly me. I don't have a camera. I couldn't very well show him how to do that, now can I? Of course I can. I have a digital crapera, which is just as good.
So I asked my friend Woody to model for me; we picked out a scenic spot over at the Carr-Alien Resort, and I took these fauxtos of him in various poses. I took care not to move the tripod or the crapera in between shots, and I took care to choose a spot void of wind and noticeable movement, so the only difference in each shot is Woody and his reflections or shadows.
Next, I took all the images in Photoshop and placed them as individual layers in a single file. I simply dragged and dropped each image onto the first one while holding the Shift key to keep them all aligned properly. Here's what my layer palette looked like:
Then, I made only the bottom two images, Layers 1 and 2, visible. The rest I hid from view. I clicked on Layer 2 to work on it and created a mask for it by clicking on the mask icon at the bottom of the layer palette:
With the mask active (you'll know it's active if the mask icon, instead of the paintbrush icon, shows up next to the layer's thumbnail), I took the Paintbrush tool (while leaving black as my foreground color) and painted directly on the second layer Woody, effectively masking him out. As I paint, the layer palette looks like this:
...and the actual image looks a bit like this:
When I completely painted Woody, his reflections and his shadows out (leaving the rest of the scenery alone), I hit Ctrl-I (or Command-I) to invert the mask, like so:
...which reveals the Woody I painted out and the layer beneath, like so:
How this works: anything white on the actual mask, which is to the right of the layer thumbnail, shows up, and anything black on the mask is "erased."
One by one, I worked on the other layers in the same fashion, creating masks for them, too, until my layer palette looked like this:
...and my image looked like this:
See? Really simple. My thanks go to Woody for being such a great model and to Broch for asking how to do this. If you have any more Photoshop questions, feel free to send them my way.
Posted by April at 07:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 11, 2003
Too Many Hobbies, Not Enough Time
I've got a stack of cover CDs on my desk that I haven't browsed. They arrive one by one with each issue of a couple of magazines to which I subscribe—3D World and Computer Arts.
There was a time I would pop these CDs in as soon as I got them, install whatever free applications were burned onto them, and experiment. Since I've started "blogging" regularly, though, I haven't really had a chance to play with new software. Next month will see a change, I hope. I've been itching to create new art big enough to make posters—in both 2D and 3D.
I have a list of images that I want to make, a product of my scribbling whenever an idea came to me. I also have a rather large collection of works in progress—both words and images—on my hard drive, discovered when I did my little bit of "housekeeping" on the computer not too long ago. I doubt that I will ever get to them all, but I want to make a serious attempt at completing them when I get the chance.
...which probably means I'll need to post to this online journal less frequently after this month because something has to give.
*Sigh*
Growing up, I always wanted to do and to be everything. I wanted to be an actress, a singer, an artist, a writer... I wanted to do it all. What a shame that my body needs sleep every now and then. If I were a Sleepless, like in Beggars in Spain, I'd have more time in day to do whatever I wanted.
For now, though... I have too many hobbies and not enough time.
Posted by April at 10:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 10, 2003
The Novelist
The sun set in the Land Beyond, and as the desert dust hung thickly, the sky became a fiery red.
That was going to be the first line of my first published novel, written at 16. I was an aspiring writer back then, and all I wanted to do was write novels, nothing but novels. I was going to have a string of them, one right after the other, sequels to sequels and prequels galore, part ones and twos, then threes and fours. My name was going to be uttered in the same breath as Tolkien, Brooks, Eddings, and Donaldson.
Boy, was I full of myself.
But I had maps and diagrams, the layout of the various lands, leagues of them, across which my characters would trek, epic journeys made in the name of good against ultimate evil. I had family trees sketched out to help me keep track of the generations, for each series would span at least several of them, and names. There were a ton of names, most of them made up out of thin air because I wanted them to sound completely exotic and new and otherworldly.
Mine especially... my name was going to be the next big thing in fantasy and science fiction, the name of some young and upcoming writer with even more promise and potential beyond the critical acclaim.
I don't know what made me quit that dream, what made me drop it like a hot potato. I kept getting older, reading and writing less with each day, getting bored with all the story ideas I'd been tossing in my head all those first years.
I still have all those ideas. They are sitting in the back of my head. The only difference is that I'm much older now, and I have a better idea about the kind of writing I like and about the kind of writing I want to emulate. And that first line in the first novel? I wouldn't use that any more. It's too purple and too trite, and even with the studied use of active verbs the whole thing seems to lie there like a doormat.
If I undertake the task of rewriting it, though, I may just be forced to write the entire novel from beginning to end, and I don't know yet if I want to do that. Maybe in November. Or maybe never.
Anyway... I've been thinking about it a lot lately.
Posted by April at 11:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 09, 2003
Life Lesson #5: What I Learned Is at the Heart of Most Lovers' Arguments
Posted by April at 11:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 08, 2003
Bad [Contest Entry] From My Writing Past #9: Use All Ten Words
Brendan finally claimed June's egg tonight, and I've just happily sent off his prize. For some reason, the act of my sending the print to Brendan reminded me of a contest I entered last year. The assignment was to use a list of ten rather obscure words in one sentence. The prize? The winner's face on one of Davezilla's Blogger Tarot Cards.
For posterity's sake, here's my favorite of my four entries, with the ten words in bold font:
Quite angry that she wasn’t paid,
The trollop, having gotten laid,
Engaged in fisticuffs (in heels!)
With jaunty scapegrace, Chesterfield,
For guttersnipes with barbarous ways,
Who come of age at grunion bays
With sailors and lycanthropy,
Learn bittersweet misanthropy,
And that in life there is this fact:
Verisimilitude, do hookers lack;
So best to deal with fists, this sort,
Than try to win at People’s Court.
Jakob Nielsen, by the way, did not win the contest.
Posted by April at 09:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 07, 2003
If It Hadn't Been For...
Last week on my way to work I had a pretty good run with the lights—all green and easy driving, the path all clear in front of me. I had a strong feeling that it would have continued all the way to my destination, if it hadn't been for some Sunday driver at the wheel of a pickup truck. The guy cut cleanly but slowly in front of me from some side street while I was driving straight ahead at the speed limit, and I had to slow down considerably as he picked up his speed only marginally. From that point on, I caught all the red lights, missing all the green and yellow lights by mere seconds and half-minutes.
The drive began to depress me.
All I kept thinking was that if it hadn't been for that guy, I'd be where I was supposed to be at that moment; I'd be further along than I was. I wouldn't have had to stop there. Or there. Or there. Or there. Every single drawback and delay I blamed on him, and I found myself muttering, "If you hadn't cut in front of me, I'd have caught that light!"
I was suddenly reminded of people I've met, known and talked with, people who have said the same sort of things. "If I hadn't married that guy, I'd have finished college." "If I didn't have to babysit my brother, I'd have gone to that party and met him before she did." "If my co-worker and project partner didn't screw that account up, I'd be vice president of the company by now." "If I wasn't already dating him, I'd be going out with him and living differently."
It dawned on me then. We're so busy thinking about what could have been and about all the opportunities we missed out on, or might have missed out on, due to some circumstance or event we wish we had the power to change, that we fail to realize how negatively we view our life compared to that alternate life we imagine for ourselves.
How do I know for sure that the lights would have been green for me throughout the entire drive? How do I know that some other driver would not have cut in front of me, five or six intersections later? How do I even know the drive would have been better for me in general if the driver hadn't cut in front of me? How indeed?
I didn't.
And as soon as I accepted that fact, in the last third of my commute, the lights were all green for me, and again my drive became easy and clear. I somehow ended up thinking, "If it hadn't been for that driver, I'd have caught all the red lights during the final leg of my drive!" Suddenly, the driver's cutting in front of me was a good thing.
Strange, isn't it? I guess it's just in the way we look at things.
Posted by April at 09:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 06, 2003
Whimsytoons and Other Projects
I've been working on a couple of commercial endeavors off and on between posts, commissions, troublemaking and belly-button picking, and while my projects are in no way complete I decided to unveil one of them anyway, since I've been getting a lot of inquiries about my artwork. That project is Whimsytoons.com.
Whimsytoons is what H.E. and I came up with after half an hour of vicious name-calling. "You, looney toon!" "You, caricatoon!" "You, fancytoon!" "You, portraitoon!" I tried explaining to him that I just wanted something a little whimsical in my life, and we simultaneously cried out, "Whimsytoons!" It was quite a row, and I don't think H.E. and I have recovered from it yet.
Truly, it's all Broch's fault. After seeing that sexy topsy turvy cartoon version of me, he was the first to ask me if I'd make a cartoon version of him, too, that homebreaker. If it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't be sneaking off and making furtive strokes in the monitor-lit darkness with my Wacom tablet. I wouldn't be taking naughty fauxtos with my Cantoff PS6 digital crapera. By now, you all know my weaknesses, and well, Broch was the first to discover them, that auto cad.
The other project in the works has to do with a more mature style of illustration and with more fantasy-related subjects. I've been playing around with the idea for a long time now, but only recently have I started seriously thinking about it, thanks to some work I've been doing for Mark, whose photography web site by the way is totally not safe for work, and I don't mean in a "You could get a hernia for not lifting with your legs" kind of way. Not safe for work, that is, unless you work on porn sites for a living or something.
[Hey, we're all sexual human beings, and half of you find this site by searching for "alien sex" on Google anyway, so don't act all shocked and offended by that last link. Hell, I don't even remember ever mentioning "alien sex" anywhere on this site before today. Really, you people are sick. Everyone knows no alien would ever have sex with us; we have no snouts on our heads, we have whites in our eyes, and we're not pink (well, not pink, except maybe H.E., who is Irish). Now that's just downright gross to any sane alien out there.]
But anyway, that's what I've been working on.
If you get a chance, look over Whimsytoons.com and send me some feedback. I'll be working on it off and on between posts, commissions, troublemaking and belly-button picking. That belly-button picking really takes a lot out of me.
Lint, mostly, but that's another post entirely.
Posted by April at 07:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 03, 2003
Yanking Doodles #4: Buried in the Hard Drive
I was just doing a little "housekeeping" on my hard drive and found the following image. Some of you might recognize the original pencil drawing from one of my older entries.
I also found this one, based on another hand-drawn piece. Slurp!
Posted by April at 11:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 02, 2003
Won't You Be My Neighbor?
I don't know how I manage to do it every time, but in the last three places I've lived, I've had the worst neighbors a soul could ever want. Two apartments ago, I lived above demonspawn. After that, well, I lived above demonspawn like I was Anne Frank. And now? I live across the street from demonspawn who reenact all the snap, crackle and pop of the Pearl Harbor attack every single evening since I've moved here.
Please note: it's July 2 as I write this, and I feel as though my entire rented condo has traveled forward through time to July 4 because all I hear from outside are fireworks. Loud, crackling, exploding fireworks. Not the way you hear them when you're watching them at a park on Independence Day, but the way you hear them if you're a pyrotechnician setting them off yourself.
Apparently they're legal here, and of course I had to move into a neighborhood full of fireworks enthusiasts. After all, why break my perfect record of having the most annoying neighbors in the world?
I can see my future neighbors now, for when I move again in a few years or so. To my left will be a group of terrorists. To my right, a marching band complete with drummers and brass musicians. Above me, the entire cast of Stomp. Below, a family of chain smokers and bad barbecuers who spend all their time on their patios, right below my open windows. And across the street? Horribly ugly nudists who like to leave all their windows open and their rooms well lit.
Augh! It's enough to make me want to scream...
But I won't because the neighbors might hear me.
Posted by April at 09:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 01, 2003
Southern California's Own Special Weirdness
Yeah, so when Bill was at school in Northern California he would tell me about the strange people he met there—freaks, the lot of them, like guys who molested dogs and wore black cloaks, guys who followed Satan but preached to strangers like they were Hare Krishna.
Bill swore that Northern California was unlike Southern California in almost every way possible, and I can agree to some point. For instance, the north tends to be more liberal in politics, while the south tends to be more conservative. Yet I really must say that we have just as many weirdos down here as they have up there. I didn't know of any at the time Bill and I talked about this, but hey... it was only a matter of time before some San Diego freak drove an army tank down the freeway.
It's been years, though, since I've seen anything weird in "the Southland." Every now and then, Jim's observations on Orange County life and people amuse me, but they more often than not show quirkiness rather than weirdness.
Then finally it happened. Orange County turned medieval this weekend, and I don't mean in a fanatics-dress-up-to-go-to-a-Renaissance-Fair kind of way. I mean truly medieval. First, some guy in Irvine kills two people with a sword. Then, some guy in Aliso Viejo shoots an arrow at a police officer.
So here I am, with the Highlander and Legolas somewhere in my neighborhood, and no Bill to brag to about all this Southern California weirdness suddenly popping up. I swear... why is the proof never there when you most need it?
Bill would have totally gotten a kick out of that.
Posted by April at 10:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack