Category: Uncategorized

I should be sleeping, or drawing

I should be sleeping right now. I’m a little under the weather. Feels like a virus invading the cells in the back of my throat. That overall soreness my body is feeling is actually a side-effect of my body’s attempts to dispose of the virus. That runny nose is just to annoy me. Watching Star Wars Episode II on an 8-story screen made me feel quite a bit better, actually. That was a lot of fun, and it was good to begin feeling better. But I should be sleeping. I probably should have just gone to bed at midnight when I got home instead of going to see the 12:30 Empire. I probably should have gone to bed when I got home from that over an hour ago instead of writing that review and making this post.

Or, if I was going to be awake from 12 to 4AM, I should have been working on my homework. I’ve got a really good start on my drawing assignment. The pictures got taken and developed Friday (thank you, Angela) and I’ve got 85% – 90% of the shapes penciled into the drawing. Another hour or two of that, then probably another 6 or 8 hours shading everything very carefully. I was able to do an amazing job with charcoal sticks and charcoal powder on an image with cloth and flesh and sky in it, but I don’t know how well I’ll do with pencils and graphite powder (which you may not realize behaves in a totally different manner than charcoal powder) on an image with hard, flat surfaces only.

That one I have until Wednesday to complete, but my 2D Design project is due Tuesday and I hate to admit it, but I haven’t even started, really. I keep changing my mind about what I want to do with it, but while I was watching previews before Empire I got an idea that meets the requirements of the assignment, matches well with my creative style, and (as opposed to the half a dozen or more ideas I’ve had so far that did those things) will not take forever to complete. That project involves creating a photo-montage with realistic depth cues but surreal content. I like saying “photo-montage” instead of “collage” because I’ve never really been able to create a collage I was satisfied with before. I usually don’t know what to do. But I’m treating this in my head somewhat like a giant Photoshop Ping Pong image. (Psst! Zoe! Iain! There’s a months old match there with only three volleys! Go volley! Something!) I may upload it as a volley when I’m through with it. Presumably before Tuesday at 4:40PM, when I’m supposed to be able to turn it in.

Anyway, I think I’m going to go lay down. Perchance to sleep. Perchance to get right back up again and start working on my homework. Maybe I’ll just leak snot for a while and then pass out. Or pudding.

I love the British

Aren’t the British great? Look at this example, from a dictionary:

calico (KAL-i-co) noun, plural calicoes or calicos

1. A brightly printed coarse cotton cloth.

2. (Mainly British) A plain white cotton cloth.

3. An animal having a spotted coat, especially with red and black patches.

Look at that! The number one definition and the related animal definition are precisely the opposite of “plain white cotton cloth”. Woohoo! Man, I can’t wait to move to Britain! It’ll be like a fish who’d lived its entire life out of water finally finding itself in a much more comfortable setting! Or pudding!

Problems with Timespace

Okay, so I was looking to print out a Year 1 calendar, and a Year 2 calendar, so I could look ahead and make some plans, and I found that my updated spreadsheets that were printable versions of whole years were part of the information that was unrecoverable from Realink in the layoff. Still, I had some older versions of the spreadsheet from Year -3, so I started to draw from it to make a printable one.

I noticed that 9/11/00 was the last day of year -3. I couldn’t remember if that was the 9/11, so I looked it up online and found out it was a year off. Because of the way my spreadsheet oh-so-cleverly calculates things, it was an easy matter for me to adjust it so that the last day of year -3 was 9/11/01. The change implied other things, shifting the entire calendar up 365 days. Some of the personal events that moved to dates that made more sense I will not detail, but for instance, with the new alignment, Year Zero would start on Cinco de Mayo next year, Year One would start on the first leap day on the new millenium, and based on my already established rules for interpreting annual holidays (whatever day they fall on in the first positively numbered year arbitrarily becomes the new day for them to continue on) Actually puts Christmas on the first day of the year, every year; The first day of year 2 would be 12/25/04. It also puts my birthday at nine days after Christmas.

Maybe I’ve been right, though. The way I’ve been calculating things before, Christmas always falls on the last day of the year, and the first leap day of the farmer’s millenium falls on a meaningless day in the second week of the third month of year 2, and the day ********** declares war on the US is a meaningless day in month ** of Year 1, instead of ****************** I guess I’m not saying….

Nevermind.

What am I still doing up? Shouldn’t I be sleeping and/or doing homework instead? I guess I’m trying to hurt my Drawing performance. Maybe I’m just crazy.