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October 31, 2003
Trick or Treat
Posted by April at 06:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 28, 2003
You Can Take It With You
The wildfires in my end of the state have forced me to take a good look at my possessions and think about what is most important to me. If you had only 20 minutes to evacuate, and if you had only the space in your car for your belongings, what would you take with you so that it doesn't burn to the ground, forever lost?
Well... all humans and household pets are a given. That's easy.
Next, I would take the essential forms of identification, passport, cash, cards, and checkbook. An overnight bag with a change of clothes, toiletries, and a first aid kit—a collection of stuff that H.E. would call a "survivor kit," which is the sort of thing you would have in the trunk of your car anyway, in case of emergencies.
Then I would take my family photo albums, my journals and diaries, my sketchbooks, address books, and the growing collection of CDs that hold my digital artwork. H.E. always tells me I should make a couple of copies of each CD and store the copies in a safety deposit box in quite another town, but even if I had a million copies stored all over the country, I would take my CD binder with me anyway.
Beyond that, I don't know what else I'd take. Important papers, yes. Perhaps my diplomas. Some books I have which are autographed by the authors. I still have plenty of room in the car and plenty of time, so I'll also take a few more changes of clothes—maybe even take my keep-forever clothes, like my old cheerleading outfits which are totally irreplaceable for sentimental reasons alone.
My music CDs can be replaced. So can my software and my computers; they are all hand-me-downs anyway, as I have never actually ever bought a computer for myself.
Everything else can go. I have nothing of value, not even jewelry. I have an old stamp collection from my childhood, but I doubt it's worth much; I don't even know why I keep it. I also have a ton of sheet music and piano books, but I can always get those replaced, too, if I ever get around to living around a piano again.
But I think I've covered everything important. What about you?
Posted by April at 11:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 25, 2003
Hellfire
The sunlight streaming in between the blinds earlier today was reddish in hue, an alien light, as though I lived on Mars, and although I missed the sunset today, I'll wager anything that it was breathtakingly beautiful. Outside, particulates float in the air, covering the cars in a grungy film of ashy debris. That's what happens when a wildfire rages uncontrollably not 60 miles away.
As I write this, over 200 homes have been swallowed by the flames—million-dollar homes at the very least.
When I saw the live footage of the fire, it looked like a scene out of the Lord of the Rings movies—epic destruction, great big mountainous plumes of orange-glowing smoke, lit as they were from below, a scene far too vast to fit in the camera's view even from miles and miles and miles away. It doesn't help that we have hot and dry Santa Ana weather right now, and it doesn't help that the southwest-blowing winds from the desert direct the fire toward more of the homes, the embers flying so that even houses that are blocks and blocks away, amid untouched neighboring houses, fall in flames. Hell, the planes and helicopters fighting the fire have had to come down because the smoke became too much.
The officials suspect arson, and while I think they're right, I cannot imagine how anyone would want to cause this hell-on-earth devastation. What sick and twisted mind likes to look at people weeping over the loss of all their possessions or frantically trying to save their homes and loved ones? A firefighter, after a long hard shift of fighting the wildfire, came home to find his own house had burned down.
How awful is that?
If there is a hell, like Dante's hell, is that where arsonists should go to be punished? They obviously have a fascination for fire, for the flames that light and lick, the smoke that sears and suffocates. Maybe hellfire would only be a reward for them, as it would feed their fascination.
I can't believe I'm wondering about this.
Update 2003.10.26 3:00pm: Hundreds of thousands of acres burning. Over 300 homes destroyed. Flights in LAX, John Wayne, Ontario, Lindbergh Field, etc. cancelled or delayed. Three-mile visibility. Fires in San Diego as well, near where I used to live even. Plane crash, too. More dry winds forecasted. Absolutely no rain forecasted. Power lines in danger, which might mean a loss of power for days. So far, a dozen people killed.
I am downwind of a lot of it and can smell the smoke even from my bathroom, and I am nowhere near it.
I hope they catch the arsonists, as this is a special kind of terrorism.
Update 2003.10.26 9:15pm: Over 600 homes now, and just because it's night, it doesn't mean the fire is going to sleep.
Sigh. With the recall election, the strikes, and the fires, California's having a pretty bad year.
Posted by April at 10:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 22, 2003
A Moonless Starry Sky
When I look up at the starry sky, I see the product of my dreams in bold relief. I often wonder if others see the same, or if their magic eye is sadly blind.
Posted by April at 10:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 19, 2003
The Cost of Books
Amazing. When I stopped by Walgreens to pick up a prescription, a pile of the latest Harry Potter hardcover books caught my eye. They were selling them for less than $3 each. Three dollars! Considering that the book is 870 pages long, it must have cost more to make and ship the book, and there it was at $3 each.
I bought the book, of course. It was on my wish list, but I never got around to getting it and reading it. I was busy with other books and projects, and I just couldn't justify spending $20-$40 on the thing. As much as I love reading, I love saving money even more. That's why my library card is so well used.
Still... at $3 a book, it's a deal! The people selling it can't get much profit though. Money has to go to the writer, the illustrator, the printer, the advertiser, the warehouse, the shipping company, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, et cetera, et cetera. The only way you can make any money at $3 a book is if you didn't have it printed and bound, boxed and stored, shipped and sold. It would have to be an e-book, bought with a couple of clicks by an interested surfer miles away and downloaded within moments, paper-free.
Speaking of e-books, the books I mentioned before were released yesterday. Sapphire Williams, who wrote Laird Mackenzie's Curse, is excited about the whole thing; it's her first book, so she's having a lot of fun with the author interviews, the reviews (which have been good so far), the sales numbers (which are also pretty good for a first e-book), and the contests (where she's giving out some cool prizes). Carroll Mavis-Raine, who wrote Sweet & Slow, is probably a lot more familiar with the process; she's written at least four other books for print under her real name, Carole Bellacera, and her books have gotten her great reviews and a few award nominations.
Anyway, since there aren't any printing or shipping costs, a lot more of the money goes to the publisher, to the writer, and to the cover artist (that would be me!). So I'm hoping people out there aren't like me with the Harry Potter book and just buy, buy, buy a ton of the two e-books. [Blatant hint to anyone out there!]
Heh, then maybe I'd finally have enough money to buy J. K. Rowling's books at their full price.
Posted by April at 09:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 16, 2003
Migraine
I find that the etymology of the word migraine—which comes from "half-skull" or "pain in one side of the head"—fascinates me. Perhaps because I have one.
Even after Alleve, Ibuprofen and Tylenol with codeine, even after neck, back and temple massages, even after bags of ice have been applied to tense muscles, the pain and nausea remain.
And the thing with migraines is, I usually have them two nights in a row, along with night sweats and a great deal of whimpering.
Fun, fun, fun!
Posted by April at 09:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 13, 2003
Conditional Love
To no one in particular,
Everyone wants unconditional love. I cannot give it to you.
If you want unconditional love, go find yourself a dog, a god, or an enabling personality. No matter how neglectful, abusive, or hurtful you might be, you can be sure to find unwavering love from those three.
But not me.
If you strike me or neglect me, I will not look at you with puppy dog eyes or fetch your slippers. If you kill or maim another human being, I will not forgive you or absolve you of all guilt. If you regularly hurt me or trample upon my soul, I will not justify your actions or hope you get better with time.
Why not? Because I don't like being a victim. Because I don't hate myself that much. Because pity is not what I want from people. That's not the kind of attention I like.
The love I give will be like the warmth of sunshine, but not if all you give me is stormy rain. Love isn't like that. It wasn't meant to be. But if you think otherwise, then your idea of love is warped.
And you will only pass it on to your children if you get that unconditional love you seek so much. That's why I cannot give it to you.
I will love my children better than that.
Posted by April at 10:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 10, 2003
Photoshop Tips and Tricks #4: Realistic Preset Textures
Photoshop comes with preset textures like this one, called Snake Skin:
These grayscale PSD files are seamless patterns and don't usually look like much, but that's because they're meant to be used in conjunction with the basic Photoshop tools. For instance, you can use the snake skin texture as a texture channel when rendering Lighting Effects (Filter > Render > Lighting Effects) and get this:
Or you can load the texture into the Texturizer (Filter > Texture > Texturizer...) and get this:
Either of those ways are cool enough by themselves, but for me, the results look a little harsh or flat—hey, I'm a perfectionist with a compulsive streak. So I came up with a way to give the texture a little more life.
First, we begin with filling the entire canvas with the texture. You can do that by selecting Filter > Render > Texture Fill... and finding your way to the Photoshop preset textures folder, where the Snake Skin texture is hidden. The collection of textures will vary depending on the version of Photoshop.
Once the canvas is filled with the texture, select all of it (Ctrl-A/Command-A) and copy (Ctrl-C/Command-C), then go to your Channels palette, create a new alpha channel (that's the icon to the left of the trash can icon), and paste (Ctrl-V/Command-V).
Next, go back to the Layers palette and create a new layer. Select a few colors and randomly fill this layer with those colors. It doesn't make sense now, but the randomness in color will give the end result a little more sense of realism. In this example, I chose two shades of brownish green and selected Filter > Render > Clouds.
Then set this layer to multiply, like so:
What you'll get is a little something like this:
Looks more like peas in a pot at this point, but stick with me; it gets better. Merge the two layers into one and name it whatever you like so you can keep track of it in the following steps. I named mine "snake skin texture."
Next, duplicate the layer twice (you can drag a layer onto the new layer icon to create another layer like it), like I did here:
Hide the topmost copy from view and work on the first copy, like so:
Now, on this layer, we'll do a little magic. Select Filter > Render > Lighting Effects... and create a source of light from one angle, using the alpha channel you created earlier as a texture channel. If you click the image below, you'll see the settings I used in mine, where my light source is coming from the bottom left.
And this is the result:
Then, and here's the trick, select the highlights. You can do this by hitting Ctrl-Shift-Alt-~ (that last of the four keys is the tilde) on PC or Command-Shift-Option-~ on Mac. This is what it looks like when you select the highlights; you get crawling ants surrounding the lighter areas of the image:
At this point, if you hit Ctrl-J on the PC or Command-J on the Mac, you make a copy of your selection onto a new layer above this one (yeah, I know, Photoshop has a lot of really neat hidden shortcuts), like so:
What I've done then is name this new layer "key light highlights," while setting it at Lighten, and delete the layer below it, like so:
What you get is this:
It's already pretty good, isn't it? It looks like a photo of snake skin with a key light source coming from the bottom left. The only problem is that most photos usually have more than one light source.
This is where the second copy of the snake skin texture layer comes in. I do the same thing to it that I did to the first copy, except I use a different lighting angle and set the layer to Soft Light instead of Lighten.
What you get is this, snake skin with two light sources:
This is good enough to be a final image, but of course, with me being such a Photoshop-aholic, I couldn't leave well enough alone. I thought that there was a little too much relief in this texture, so I flattened it just a little bit by adding another little layer above the texture layer and setting it to Soft Light.
And this, my friends, is my final (click to see entire image):
Realistic snake skin—a piece of cake. The proof is in the fact that I only just came up with this technique while trying to come up with a Photoshop tutorial that was -ahem- overdue for posting.
Update 2003.10.12, 2:00pm: here's a version with patterned colors, like on a patterned snake...
Posted by April at 10:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 07, 2003
Move Along, Folks
There is nothing to see here.
Posted by April at 11:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 04, 2003
Bad [WD Assignment] From My Writing Past #11: FRAGRANCE (12/7/1992)
Funny how Adam never noticed her scent; she smelled faintly of roses, the kind that grew along the border of her herbal garden—intoxicating. Really intoxicating. Another moment of her scent whispering beneath his nostrils, and he'd be swooning at her feet like a woman. God, but how could he have mistrusted her and thought her ugly when she was so innocent and beautiful that it made him weak with love and longing?
"Rather cold out, isn't it?" she asked, her hooked nose wrinkling as her face broke into a knowing, sneering grin.
Adam gaped at her as though she'd just told him the most astonishing, the most wonderfully fascinating thing, and nodded. "Never colder," he agreed eagerly.
Cackling, she seized his arm with bony fingers and gave him an icy look before pulling him inside. "Everyone that crosses me," she said before closing the door, "shall get a whiff of my love potion and suffer the consequences—and that, Adam, includes you."
[Each sentence begins with a letter that spells out the title.]
Posted by April at 10:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 01, 2003
Plumbing Problems
The trouble with plumbing is that while it's essential, it's the last thing that comes to mind. It's one of those things that works behind the scenes but is never noticed, so if anything goes wrong, no one knows it until the last minute, when everything is spewing fluids all over the place and people are sputtering and drowning and the whole thing is just broken almost beyond repair.
Anyway, a while ago, my bathroom sink started leaking.
My first indication of it was wet feet, but I thought it was from me dripping on the bathroom floor after my Hollywood—read, 15-minute and not Hitchcock's Psycho—shower.
My second indication of the leak was wet sock-clad feet, but I thought it was from the cat in a freaky fit of incontinence after I made her laugh so hard over that really bad pussy joke—which is really kind of a feat considering that, well, you know how only the Irish can tell Irish jokes and only black people can tell black people jokes? Well... oh... you know what, never mind.
My third indication was of me nearly slipping and hitting my head on the counter, spilling my puny plaid brains all over the place and totally messing up the tasteless decor, but I thought it was from my sloppy job of mopping up the floor in my cleaning of the bathroom—kind of a necessary chore, you know, with the pony leaving all those long black tail and mane hairs all over the place.
So I wiped up the mess all three times, never thinking that anything was wrong.
And then it dawned on me that, hey, it was the sink that was dripping and peeing and leaving that sloppy mess on the floor, and because the bathtub is a jealous type and can't stand that anyone other than itself would get any attention, the bathtub started leaking, too.
So there, in the time that I have been trying to schedule and reschedule an appointment with a new gynecologist—which is quite another story, let me tell you—my bathroom has been weeping and leaking heavily, bitching and moaning, and absolutely complaining that I never listen to her or do anything for her, all in that hysterical leave-me-alone kind of way, and boy, did that really piss me off.
The only one allowed to have PMS in my household is me. Let me make that clear.
Needless to say, I called the property management and made all kinds of arrangements. I also stopped brushing my teeth. Not completely, mind you. Just at the bathroom sink, because the bathroom sink not only leaked at the bottom, but at the top. If you turned the tap, the water would come out of everything but the faucet. It would come out at the knobs and the plugs, out the pipes beneath the sink. Heck, it would come out of my very own nose before it came out of the faucet, so I started brushing my teeth at the kitchen sink.
Please do not scour the pots with my toothbrush, thank you. If I get plague plaque, I am blaming it all on the sink.
But to make a short story long, I somehow got the plumber to come in and replace the sink entirely and tighten up the washers in the bathtub faucets, too—but only after I made sure that every piece of furniture in the place was moved at least twice, every box packed, unpacked, and moved at least three times, and every black-haired cat scared beneath the bed by the vacuum cleaner at least five times, and then some, because I absolutely cannot have anyone in the condo, be they plumber or president, unless the place is properly presentable. So, yeah.
As of yesterday, my sink is like new.
Now if only I can finally see that gynecologist for another kind of plumbing. Like I said, it's quite another story, fraught with cancellations and rescheduling, where if it isn't one thing it's another—wrong time of the month for a check-up, doctor calling in sick, lunch meeting remembered at the last minute, and my die-hard insistence that I get a board-certified doctor and not some midwife from the medieval times with a lot of leeches and lice carrying the bubonic plaque plague. Because, you know, I have had problems before.
So I have been trying to see my doctor since July, and if all goes well, I might finally, just maybe, get my wish in late October.
Whew! Thank God I don't leak all over the place like the bathroom sink did; I don't think the sight would be pretty. And at least now, I'm the only one in the household who gets PMS.
Just like it should be.
Posted by April at 01:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack