Well, it’s late and I’ve already been politely reminded to head to bed, so I’m not going to stay up any longer to talk at you about how I drew this except to say that it’s (obviously) a digital drawing and I’ll write another post about the software and process tomorrow.
This is a portrait of my beautiful wife, Bex, using photo reference, by me using mixed media. You can click the image for a slightly larger version.
Sorry for the lack of posts over the past few days. Here’s what I’ve been doing:
I ended up working a fourteen-hour day on Wednesday to add MSIE 5.5 support to our application at work (went from 0 to supported in that span of time, too, which isn’t bad considering how many style definitions we had and how much JavaScript could have gone wrong but most thankfully didn’t).
My amigo MCM over at Push the Third Button Twice posted a reaction to an article on The Mu Life titled, Did You Read The Article? MCM raises an interesting point about how we shouldn’t judge books by their covers, or blogs by their fame (or lack thereof).
I think I’ve already stated my position on Digg users making worthless contributions to story discussion threads, so no argument there. I also agree with MCM’s conclusion: Blogs shouldn’t just be discounted because they’re “petite frites” compared to commercial news sites.
Judging from the few posts I’ve already made, you’ve probably already figured out for yourself that this is hardly a celebrity news blog. But when the news involves (the termination of) Britney Spears’ marriage, I can hardly contain myself from exclaiming my deligh relie deep sorrow at the news.
Poke fun all you want, but K-Fed’s a totally talented musician, man. And now Brit-brit’s gone and announced that she wants out just when he needed her love the most.
Hope you didn’t get any of that sarcasm on your tie. Anyway, so long, K-Fed: your fifteen minutes were a bit longer than most. Don’t worry, I’m certain they aren’t quite over yet: you’ll be sure to be raked over the coals for prior relationship failures, lack of singing talent, and something about riding on coat-tails before your name is happily forgotten the world over.
As I’ve mentioned in this space before, I use a software package called Boodler to create environmental audio for entertainment purposes. Although I make use of it on a daily basis I haven’t actually done any soundscape development for a couple months or so; our newborn son took care of a lot of the time, but I needed a bit of a break as well—I had been working on some rather complex stuff to get different Boodler agents to be able to communicate with one another in real-time to be able to perform fancy scheduling tricks (like having crickets suddenly go quiet at the sound of a loud thunderclap).
I confess I was surprised when I read that Microsoft had a change of heart on the subject of allowing Windows Vista to be reinstalled. Apparently someone at Microsoft got the message from the online community that their previous position—which was to allow the software to be reinstalled once only, ever—was pretty stupid, and that its discovery and wide publication was doing them more harm than good for a product that is already receiving a hefty share of criticism from the community on other issues.
Although the title is probably inaccurate (I doubt a single strip of film will be exposed for the whole thing), and there is time yet for a change of plan (or heart), I stumbled upon the news today that The Hobbit will become not one, but two films, and that both will be directed by none other than Peter Jackson. Yes, I know the news is now a week and a half stale, but somehow it managed to slip past me last week. I confess I haven’t exactly been scouring the internets for news on the subject since any more real news on the subject is probably still years away.
It’s finally the weekend and none too soon: My week hasn’t been especially bad (but not especially good either. Kind of so-so) but today could have gone better—Squeaker wanted to be entertained at 4 in the morning, I had a fun visit at the bank with my financial advisor (I think I’ve decided I prefer going to the dentist), and I’m dog-tired well before my usual bedtime.
I’ve been slaving away this week at lots of Python code, too—it’s the worst kind, to boot; I’m refactoring my own old code, which is a thankless job if ever there were one (although I am adding a number of extra little switches and things for efficiency, better error handling, output verification, etc.). When you’re already pressed for time on a product release schedule, trying to explain to your manager that you’re trying to leave maintainable code that could mean literally hours of saved time per week from those that employ it regularly is pretty awkward when he knows the old version worked (no matter how old and busted you think it is).
I had thought by now I would have inflamed someone sufficiently to post a comment—even of the rude or derogatory variety—but apparently that isn’t the case. After examining the link to add comments, which used to read “No Comments”, I decided that perhaps the fault was my own as this might be being interpreted as meaning comments are closed when they are, in fact, open.
Please don’t be afraid to register for an account to post comments—The process takes a few seconds and you only have to suffer through it once (unless I screw up and wipe the database, in which case there will be nothing worth commenting on anyway, except maybe my stupidity. You can make a pre-emptive strike now if you like).
Once you’ve signed up for an account, you can tell me if my poor turn of phrase confused you into thinking comments were unwelcome or not; you’re also welcome to trackback to any articles you like—the permalink to do so is the same as the URL of the article in question.
… Let me share a couple pictures from Hallowe’en 2006.
First, the jack-o’-lantern, pattern of which is probably recognisable to most readers, was wantonly downloaded from Homestar Runner then Dremel-tooled out with a bit of knife-work for the straight edges. It turned out all right considering how quickly I threw it together, but it probably left a lot of trick-or-treaters confused.
And then there’s my costume, which is the same as last year plus the addition of one PASGT helmet. I had wanted to silkscreen two large white-text-on-black “RIAA” badges to put on the ammo vest, but couldn’t find the time to pull it off this year. Maybe in 2007.