July 2005

This morning I’m not in the mood for a post.

Please, enjoy this photo of the computers I work at until I’m back this afternoon.

And there’s some great links at robotwisdom lately. Go over there for now. Or J-Walk. They give good link.

Actually, not feeling so hot this morning.

Taking the day off blogging and everything.

Helluva weekend. Busy. No blogging.

Been a while since I was away so long.

More blogging before noon Monday. Promise.

See ya then. Good night.

Tagging photos is tricky. For this years con, which is starting and is much photographed already, you can get to the photos with these tags:

comiccon comicon sdcc comiccon2005 sdcc2005.

Metadata from the swarm!

There are probably other tags too.

I was fascinated by Japan as a teenager. Everyone seemed to think they’d buy everything up and kick everyone’s ass. So I played around with learning the Katakana and Hiragana script. I’ve forgotten it all, but this looks like it could be a sign on the Ginza to me. The type is not a font, but drawing with the native DPaint II tools. Very nice tools to draw to a grid. I like it better than the way PhotoShop does grids, though PShop does have guides, which I would have loved on the Amiga.

The colors are even Japanese – garish, but pretty.

I still love Japanese things, though I’m a bit more moderate about it.

Also, my Amiga Pictures 1986-1991 got linked to by Matt Haughey, so now some people are looking at my stuff and bookmarking it in del.icio.us.

That’s kinda cool.

I wanted to, as a batch, change the Creative Commons licenses for the set. Is that possible? I didn’t see it in Organizr.

After High School and before moving to Virginia, there were a few times I went and visited my friend Chris at Cal State Fullerton. This drawing was done from memory of whizzing by it on the 15 Freeway on the way to Fullerton. Why I took the 15 I don’t remember, I don’t think of it as that much faster than the 5, but I’m sure I had my reasons.

There’s something about discrete objects, and drawing them, that I enjoy. Not people, or living things, but objects.

I did take a drafting class in 1988, but it was rudimentary, and all pencil! Drawing objects that I saw was a good habit for my powers of observation. I mean, I say that, but I’m not 100% sure that I really have keen powers of observation. I think I try and pay attention, but there are definitely times I miss out on things because I’m distracted or tired or otherwise engaged.

On my lunch hour I just uploaded all my old Amiga pictures to my flickr account. See the set here.

I think there was a contest that year to design a badge for San Diego Comic Con. This was the start of something like that. DeluxePaint II (aka DPaint) was a darn good program.

I’m not going to Con this year unless something radical happens to change my mind or fatten my pocketbook.

If you’re interested in seeing the drawings and art pieces I’ve been scanning lately, with the goal of one a day, you can see them on the drawings page (well, 3 pages, it’s paginated!).

If you want my some introspection, you can read that on the memories page.

I have a love/hate relationship with categories. You see, I have 4 years worth of posts. Thousands of them. Am I really going to go back and categorize them? And what are good categories anyway? It’s a little frustrating.

But categories help me locate posts better, and I definitely appreciate that. Going forward I’m using them, fo’ sho’.

I recently read the article Don’t Bore Me With Your Blog, by Susan Solomon. She claims blogs should not contain musings or personal thoughts or the like. She says:

What’s wrong with most blogs? They’re too chatty, like my first paragraph. You probably didn’t need to hear about my teen, but I thought it was clever. So I bulked up my writing with inconsequential meanderings. That’s bad blog form.

If you’re going to blog, become an expert on something. This is especially important for blogging in the business world.

I’m confused. She points out “blogging in the business world” as a distinct thing, and yet she objects to chattiness across the board for any blog?

Well, I’m being chatty, and I’m blogging. I’m all for it. Some of my favorite bloggers are chatty.

Did I mention: “be yourself” the other day?

Be yourself.

I will write more about these drawings. But not right now.