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Randomousness (?) - Seaside Girl

  • May. 13th, 2012 at 12:35 PM
southpark ian
This sort of counts as Randomousness, I guess. :)

Playing with a new iPad drawing app, the one which Wacom markets for the stylus that they sell. (PS: It's quite a nice stylus. The barrel is pen-sized, and the rubber bulb is smaller than pretty much every other rubber-bulb stylus out there, so it offers better drawing control.) 


The app is Bamboo Paper, and the sketch ("Seaside Girl") was freehanded on a moving train. :)

"Seaside Girl"

-ir out.


helm
I have been remiss! Or out of practice, hard to say which. 

It's been so long since I regularly posted here, that I forgot to post that my lovely wife has been updating her blog about her Zimbabwe trip, over at http://hopeallysondwiggins.com/.

On scrolls and project blogs

  • Mar. 26th, 2012 at 1:53 PM
helm
Hm, forgot to cross-post this. 

There's two new items over at my project blog, two scrolls which went out this past weekend at Mudthaw. I can post this now that I'm sure that happened. :)

http://smidgeonink.com/made_stuff/

On dreams and recollection.

  • Jan. 23rd, 2012 at 5:32 AM
helm

It wasn't so much a dream within a dream, part of my day within the dream, and I only remember it now because I spent so much time in the dream telling everyone about it - partially because I thought was story-worthy, and partially because people kept asking my what I had written on my arm.

I was in a parking lot of a business attached to a hotel, at an intersection I vividly recall knowing well, but damned if I can remember it now. I was working on something... Cleaning out my car? What I did for work? Regardless, I could suddenly hear, in my head, the voice of a child trying to convince a sibling and whoever was driving that he could hear a ghost talking. And that it was nearby, and he wanted them to stop so he could listen to it. What was weird was that I couldn't hear the rest of the conversation, I could only... sense the child's reaction to what was said, but I knew they weren't making themselves clear or selling their story very well. It seemed like they were in slow-moving traffic, or at a really long stoplight, because I could clearly hear this for a while, and get a sense of rising frustration, as well as more and more of the sensation of the rest of the conversation - it was like the child was so sure of his conviction, of what he heard (in the dream I kept thinking it was a he, but was never sure) that he was broadcasting his thoughts to whoever was able to receive them.

Eventually, I was so intrigued that I got in my car and started to drive around the area to see if could locate them, to no avail. I tried to grab a pen or marker to write down the salient points so I'd remember, but for some reason, I couldn't get just one out of the huge zip-lock bag on m passenger seat (?). Eventually, still driving, I got one marker out, but it was white, and wouldn't write well on my arm. Which I recall being foam rubber... which in turn makes me think I might have been a muppet. in the dream. I pulled over, into the hotel parking lot on the other side of the block from where I started, to get a different marker (maroon, I think) and write down everything I could remember (on my arm, still) until what I was hearing dissolved into a quiet jumble, as they perhaps drove out broadcast range. At the end, I got the strong impression of the adult (or adults) trying to change the subject on the kid, and talk about a sport or activity which eventually put _me_ in mind of swimming, so I went to friend or relative's house and went swimming (either I wasn't working like I think I was, or hey - f@ck work).

Two further interesting notes:

1. While at the pool, I came up with a comedy routine involving asking a dolphin how to keep water out of my scuba mask ("what's a mask?", the dolphin would ask me) which was hilarious, and only lends credence to the "I might have been a muppet" theory. Also, because it was a dream, the dolphin started as a remote control pool toy, and became a real, albeit miniature, dolphin, capable of living in chlorinated pool water. That it could talk was only part of the comedy routine. :)

2. I wonder if the "ghost" that the child could hear was my thoughts, broadcast in a similar fashion, but I don't remember thinking anything so strongly that I would broadcast it. It also could have been someone else's thoughts, or a real ghost. I do remember that, although an adult myself, I didn't think it far-fetched that there was a ghost, and spent a lot of the time trying to think where in the area the ghost was for the kid to hear it.

So this marks the first time I can remember a dream because I wrote it down in the dream, on my own arm, in maroon felt-tip marker.

-ir out.

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On mocking, and monsters.

  • Jan. 20th, 2012 at 2:56 PM
southpark ian
William Shakespeare

Oh beware, my lord, of jealousy!
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The ianraven it feeds on.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Get your own quotes:



Uh huh.

-ir out.

On slow foods. (crossposted from G+)

  • Dec. 22nd, 2011 at 12:23 PM
helm
I love my wife dearly, but we have differing ideas of what's "funny" (my definition is waaaaaay more inclusive than hers). I, for example, found Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast fall-of-the-sofa hilarious, and she would sit and ask me why I found any of it remotely amusing. Through my gasping and tears I would be forced to admit that I had no idea why it was funny... but it was. Sometimes, though, she is the funniest person I know. Sometimes, our humor meshes and we will go off on a funny and nonsensical tangent that has no equal.

One of these conversations produced the Biblical stricture that you "shall not lie with a lobster as you would your wife". Another, the one from the other night around 1:45, gave birth to Turtle® brand Sloth Bacon.

You see, turtles are natural predators of three-toed sloths… because (I figure) they need a prey slower than them. The first thing a turtle will try is to run full speed into the trunk of a tree to try and shake loose a sloth. (… … … … bonk) Assuming that this does not work, the turtles resort to lighting a fire under the sloth, and smoking/slow-cooking it while it's still in the tree. Producing sloth-bacon, the ultimate slow food. Mmm-mm.

There's a logo. Because it's what I do. (Also, It was a great way to test-drive my brand new sketch book!)

Sloth Bacon - Slow Food
helm
I certainly had an expectation this morning, knowing I was starting off my day with an hour-long train ride to get blood drawn (the lab is a few blocks from work). Instead, I had possibly the best blood-drawing experience EVAR! Very nice phlebotomist, who was done before I'd had time to realize she had the needle in. This makes me a happy puppy. (With the exception of the fasting headache I'm currently fighting.)

Next, on my walk through Philly to find the appropriate cart from which to buy breakfast, I passed the Jefferson University building on Chestnut. Someone felt it was important to cover *every street-facing ground-floor window* with the sort of printed wrap material you see on busses, each window featuring a close up of a smiling face and a positively-connoted word. Some of these are pretty meh, like "enjoy" or "relax". Then there's this one:



I was soooo disappointed to find that it didn't actually say "explode".

Finally, I chose to stop at the little breakfast cart downstairs on 16th St. We often patronize them when we need to feed [info]alysten's Red Bull habit, so I figured I'd show them some love. I noticed the two ladies running the cart seemed harried, dour, and slightly … oh, I don't know… Done With People. I watched customers firing orders at them, with varying degrees of politeness, and I figured this business is all about rude people ordering things like you're beneath them ALL DAY, and thanked whichever deity was listening that I wasn't in that line of work.

I was polite, as I try to be when dealing with people who handle my food. As I grabbed my brown bag of breakfast, I wished them both to have a good day, and they both stopped. And brightened up immensely. And smiled. Still smiling, they wished me the same, and went about their work again. I'm hopeful that simple interaction made them a little less Done With People, at least for a little while.

-ir out.

Randomousness - Flashback twofer

  • Nov. 21st, 2011 at 10:10 PM
helm
Here's an old one I found in my images folder:




And another which I was sure I'd posted, but I don't see it in the archives:



-ir out.

Randomousness - Another Two-fer

  • Nov. 18th, 2011 at 1:22 PM
helm
To get myself back on track, here's a two-fer that I've shown on my G+ gallery, but not here. I want to get back into posting these little drawings, as I have a whole bunch of them that are just rarin' to show themselves off.





-ir out.

Randomousness - Meetin' Time Again

  • Oct. 21st, 2011 at 11:16 AM
helm
Yes, this week was Quarterly Report time again, and while I didn't get as much Randomousness out of this one as some others, I'm reasonably pleased with how it came out. (Yes, I know that's an odd thing to say about a doodle made during an company meeting, but hey. One can only sit through so many slides detailing which sales people closed which deals for how much money.)



I actually think this makes me better at recalling some of what was said than sitting trying to write copious notes. Having spent much of college doing that, I have a basis for comparison - I'm a creative, that's how I'm wired. No surprise. I just wish I'd hit on this (and seen this) back then... who knows what I'd have retained. :)

As a further note, the comment in the upper left corner about what they hoped to show with this slide refers quite literally to a slide featuring 5 columns of 10-point-on-the-wall type. Completely illegible, completely ineffective as a presentation element. I worked for seven years fixing this kind of slide for financial types, who felt the best way to present was to put All The Information In The World on a slide. Couple it with a presenter on a phone calling in through a wool scarf... COMPELLING. OOH.

Also, "Greg's Best Mississippi Accent" should be a Lady Antebellum cover band.

-ir out.

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