the paper fishbowl

Saw New Moon last night, it was suitably loltastic. There were a few intentionally funny moments, which made me question my integrity for laughing at, but there was definitely enough unintentional hilarity to make up for it. Following Amy's lead, I got in with a ticket for Fantastic Mr. Fox, to avoid giving any money to the Twichise. >:} So that was delightfully subversive. But now I find myself in conflict; I genuinely liked the soundtrack. Does that mean I have bad taste in music? Bah, who cares. If I steal it off the internet, my morals are not compromised. xP

hahaha, they're platonic solids get it i'm so damn hilarious

So I guess when I go too long without a serious art project, I go and spend an entire week on the first random-ass thing that pops into my head? >_>" I ended up seriously obsessing over it, like, to the detriment of my social life and schoolwork xD but it's done now! But I'm not sure whether I like it better with or without that half-assed "dappled sunlight" layer I tossed on at the end...



( un-dappled version )
opinions?

Japanese:
MWF 10:00-10:50
TTh 10:20-11:50

Tai Chi (Ba Gua Zhang!!!! :D :D :D ):
MW 11:00-11:50

Foundations of Comp Sci:
MW 1:10-2:30

Image, Text, and Narrative in Islamic Arts:
MW 2:40-4:00
I couldn't find a studio class that fit into my schedule, so I figured maybe an art history would give me some inspiration? And I've been meaning to learn something about Islamic culture for a while anyway, I know pitifully nothing on the subject >_>"

Advanced Web Design (Hampshire):
TTh 2:00-2:30
We'll be learning server-side languages! :D Not sure if we're gonna focus more on Ruby or like PHP/MySQL, but it's all cool stuff that I'm gonna need to know if I want to get into serious web design.

I'm also on the waitlist for
West African Dance:
M 7:00-10:00 pm
because hell, why not. I like the dancey. xD

So I think this is gonna make two semesters in a row that aren't completely brutal! I wonder how long I can get away with that... for some reason, unless I'm doing enough work to kill a Japanese businessman, I always feel like I'm slacking off somehow, and that there will be karmic retribution to pay for it later. xD

It's been ages since I've did any art stuff! D: So I am fixing that, here's the project I started yesterday:


( here thar be dragons :P )



( updated! )

( updated again )

When you think about it, Smith is actually the perfect storm as far as spreading disease goes. I mean, you've got a few thousand highly stressed-out, sleep-deprived individuals all living and eating in very close quarters, and on top of it there's this attitude that staying in your room when you are sick is for WEAKLINGS, all the REAL SPARTANS must go to class and be disease vectors. xD
Though I'm totally a hypocrite pointing this out now, because even as I type I am getting ready to go to Japanese at 11. (Because it's my only class for the whole day? Because I need to turn in the corrections for that test I bombed last week to maybe get a little credit back? I promise to cover my cough...)      
I am a little plague rat, squeak squeak squeakity-squeak. xP

Sometimes procrastination pays! I finally got my cheap/lazy butt down to stoddart to get some new headphones (my old ones started fritzing out on me a few weeks ago), and discovered that they were marking down further headphones that had previously been on sale. So I ended up getting $40 headphones for like $20! score! :D

It turns out I have the resources to be Generic Pirate for the chess match, so no worries there. But that still leaves Halloween! I have come up with several ideas, and some of them don't even involve sewing:

• Captain Hammer (tape hammer sign to black t-shirt, wear rubber gloves and boots)
• Waldo ( red-and-white striped shirt, hat)            
• lolrus (wear brown+carry blue bucket+tape caption to shirt, maybe paper foot-flippers, rubber walrus nose?)
• Dr. Horrible (white labcoat, goggles, white rainboots, rubber gloves)
• Link (green tunic, white tights, cone hat, wide belt, undershirt)*
• Princess Mononoke (Convert old pillowcase into top, purple underdress, big sheet of floofy white material, make necklace/earrings out of foam clay?)**
• Katamari Prince (purple tights, green dress (with hoop?), make cylinder-head out of coffee cans and construction paper?)*
• Sheik ( top=painted/modified pillowcase, blue undershirt, tights, shorts, make basically spats, strips of white fabric for arms, hat)**
• FLCL Haruko (red jacketthing, light undershirt, black pants, big white go-go boots, wrist thingy?)**

*might involve some sewing
**would definitely involve sewing

At this point the lolrus idea seems most likely, I just have to find a little toy bucket and maybe a brown skirt. I'm not sure they even make walrus-tusk noses, though-  Acme and Faces are most likely to have something like that, right?

So: Halloween costume? I do not know how to sew! D: THIS IS A PROBLEM D: D: D:
On a related note, the SSFFS chess theme this year is pirates vs. ninjas! Dr. McNinja is already taken... I am beginning to feel that my fandoms are sorely deficient in both pirates and ninjas. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN, MAYBE I AM JUST NOT THINKING HARD ENOUGH

I guess I have the resources to be Generic Steampunk, but that is not very different from how I usually dress. Do any of you lovely people have any ideas for me? Fall break is coming up, I wonder if that is enough time to learn sewing.....

So, first week of classes!
the schedule:( here )

Everything looks pretty good so far- Japanese is still its own crazy self, Graphics looks fun, informative, and not too hard... Video Game Design looks like a lot of fun- the prof looks like he's barely out of grad school, lol. It looks to be pretty laid-back situation, and with Alex, Jessica and me able to work together at Smith campus, I think it'll work out fine.

The Buddhist/Psych happiness thing looks fascinating, even with all the reading and presenting that it would entail, but I think that I will not get in. They made us write our qualifications on a card- major, year, what courses we've taken in relevant subjects, etc. - and I am not a Psych, Philosophy, or Religions major, I have only taken Psych 1 and Chinese History and a little Tai Chi. Also, I'm a junior, and in their eyes that means I have the opportunity to take the class again later. Which may or may not be true, actually. They are looking at the cards tonight and making the cut from there, so my usual tactic of being cute and persistent doesn't even apply. :/

So the question is, what will I do without the credits from that class? I think I have enough credits to just go without a 4th class- I've taken both of my allowed P.E. credits, and Japanese gives me an extra credit each semester. On the one hand it would be pretty relaxing, and I wouldn't have to futz with my schedule, on the other hand I feel like I ought to do something with my time, and I'm not 100% sure on the credits thing. If I were to take another class to replace it, the smartest choice would probably be an art class, especially if I'm still trying for the Studio Art minor. The only problem with that is trying to work it into my schedule- art classes, especially Studio Art, tend to take up big time-blocks, and I only have room in the early morning or late afternoon. Also, they have a pretty heavy time commitment outside of class, and with me TA'ing CSC112 (aka Soul Crushing 101), I'm going to be giving up two nights a week already. And, I always feel awkward showing up at a class I'm not even waitlisted for, after missing the first week... kinda shows a lack of commitment, you know? So, I don't know what I'm going to do about that. I'd better talk to my adviser about it.

Holy crap, I got in! I guess all I needed was the cute, I didn't even have time to prove the persistence, lol. So, it's gonna be a lot of reading, but I can handle it. Freakin' sweet. :D

...And now for pictures of my room! It's a little smaller than the one I had last year, and the view is just Northrop, but the feng shui is definitely superior. ^___^

( pics here! )

...Still haven't hauled my inherited mini-fridge out of Chase basement yet- I may actually not know anyone who lives in Chase this year, wtf. Well, I'll have to sneak in during lunch or something. But, I might need some help moving it, depending on how heavy it is- I actually ended up with some pretty impressive bruises on my legs from moving in, I guess I am wrong about how to carry heavy boxes up the stairs. ~_~"

So, the kittens have escaped the fortress of the shower, and taken up residence under my parents' bed- more precisely, inside their mattress box. The impressive part, really, is how they did it. My parents' shower is basically triangular, enclosing a corner of the house with a door and two 8-foot-high tile walls. They leave a roughly 2-foot gap between the top of the wall and the ceiling, for ventilation purposes. There is a knee-high shelf in the back corner, and in the two corners that border the rest of the bathroom there are additional shelves, about 5 1/2 and 6 1/2 feet up the wall. The edge of the knee-high shelf is about 4 feet horizontally and 3 feet vertically from the edge of the lower head-height shelves.

Okay. So we already had seen that the ginger kitten could jump about 4 1/2 feet vertically, when motivated. What we didn't realize was that he could perform a Prince-of-Persia-style wall run from the edge of the knee high shelf to the edge of the lower head-height shelf. And from there maneuver himself onto the top shelf, which is exactly the same size and shape (a pie quarter with a 6-inch diameter.) And then escape over the top of the wall.
 I guess the reason we didn't think he was capable of this was that he didn't do it within the first 24 hours of his captivity, while he was still freaking out. We thought that would be the prime time for an escape attempt, and once we got him a little more settled down he wouldn't feel the need to try. How wrong we were.

The escape apparently happened sometime between 4 and 5 am. Ginger kitten was actually relatively easy to recapture; he's a friendly little guy, and we managed to talk him over to us without even using food. So, we took him back to the shower, and I kept him occupied while Mom talked to his more skittish sibling under the bed, and Dad fortified the shower with cardboard. He covered the high shelves and extended the top of the wall so that the cardboard reached about 4 inches away from the ceiling. Due to the round shape of the high shelves, there was a small gap between the cardboard and the shelves and the wall, which I covered in tape. Thinking we had secured the area, we left ginger kitten in the shower, and went to help Mom with floofy kitten. The two kittens had been calling back and forth to each other ever since we had recaptured ginger kitten, making the whole place sound (as Mom put it) like Dolores Umbridge's office. This went on for another five minutes or so before ginger kitten managed to jump through my tape barrier and ensconce himself in the cardboard- sealed shelves. By the time I peeled the cardboard off of the shelves again so I could reach him, he had wiggled his way to the top shelf. As I was putting the cardboard down, he jumped from the shelf to the top edge of the cardboard wall extension, which didn't quite reach the ceiling, perched there precariously for a moment, and escaped into the room where he rejoined his sibling under the bed. They have since worked their way into the mattress box, thanks to holes created by our older cats.

I need breakfast.

Just caught the ginger feral kitten! (s)he's really more of a pre-teen kitty at this point, really... We figured out that the spring hadn't gone off the last few nights because the lid was bent and hooked on another part of the trap. No sign of tortishell kitten yet this evening, we'll see if (s)he comes around later tonight. Ginger kitten is going to be much easier to tame, I think. It's staying in mom and dad's shower for now, we have food and litter and bedding set up in there... btw. Guys. Kittens can jump really really high when motivated. If not for my cardboard shield, it could have totally attached itself to my face with very little trouble. But, we were prepared, and the transfer went smoothly. Now we just have to figure out some kind of kitten-proof door to my parents' bathroom, so if anyone escapes the shower they won't be able to get under my parents' bed. That part is yet to be worked out.
.. now for the next one!

I intend to:
- Clean my dang room              Done!

- email Gillett's HR to open my room up because I'm going to miss check-in on the 6th and won't get a key till the 7th- the whole thing made slightly more complicated by the fact that I'm switching rooms with the person 2 doors down from me, so the room I'll be asking the HR to open will be hers, and I have to trust her to get the room that will be mine unlocked. I'd better figure out who is the HR this year, I never pay attention to that stuff.

- finish the VFH site, which consists of
                                 1) adding mom's picture
                                 2) making a clean pdf of that form the secretary gave me
                                 3) actually putting the site up
                                 4) setting up an office email for Dr. Eng

- Sketch, speedpaint a little. I am still far too meticulous with my comic stuff. I need to loosen my style up so it flows better and goes faster.

- crack open the iphone SDK and start coding on my Super Secret App of Secrecy. I don't imagine I'll be anywhere near done by the 6th, but I rally ought to get a start on it while I have a little time, right?

- finish sewing my goggles


There's also the matter of the feral kittens we're trying to trap. They come through the yard every day now, and we have a trap out and baited with tuna and dry catfood, but we haven't actually been able to catch them yet. It seems they'll go as far as halfway into the trap, but they've avoided tripping the hatch, sneaky little things. Once we do get them, we're going to need to spend some time getting them cleaned up and socialized.


*edit*
...add to that list, "clean up hard drive". I'm running out of space again. *sigh*

yes, I have been off in the wilds of Idaho again, hanging with a truly remarkable number of relatives for such a small cabin. I am back in the tri-cities again. I should have been working on the Vista Family Health website, but instead I made 3 pages of comic. udddh bluh asdfghjkl; gueh i am not good at storytelling or consistency or lighting yet but i can draw pretty ok and the other stuff i will pick up as i go along maybe? I do have a whole plot worked out and it is super long omg, and at the rate I put out pages i might have a whole chapter by like 2038. :P Also apparently my laptop screen and my art screen are calibrated way differently, and all attempts to resolve the problem just make the discrepancy worse. So maybe if the colors look funky to you it is my laptop screen that is wrong, and if they don't the problem lies in my big monitor. It's also possible that I have no color sense whatsoever. >_>"


(  ok so enough blathering here is some comic. exposition doesn't even really start till the 5th or 6th page *coughnotdrawnyetcough* because i am a terrible person. blar blar blar )

In much cuter and completely unrelated news, when we came back we found a family of feral kitties living under our deck! Mommycat is this scrawny little longhair that we've seen around the yard before- she's very shy, she'll run off if she sees you looking at her too much. I think she has fought with our cats in the past. Her 4 kittens are about 8 weeks old, 3 gingers and one floofy black one. ^w^ They've been eating the cat food we left for our outside cat while we were away. Our cat doesn't interact with them at all, though- he's neutered (not the father) and male cats aren't usually that parental anyway. We think the daddycat is this ginger tom who has also been hanging around the yard, but we always thought he belonged to one of the neighbors because he's plumper and not terribly shy. But if he's not neutered....?
Anyway, we're probably going to have to trap the lot of them, get the parents spayed/neutered, and find homes for the kittens. We're trying to figure out if dadycat belongs to anyone first, though- it's probably bad form to trap and neuter other people's cats, even if it needs to be done. It kinda sounds like a job for Animal Control, but they're not open on Mondays, and we're also a little concerned that they'd put mommycat down- she's definitely not comfortable around people, so she'd have a hard time getting adopted from a shelter. She doesn't get along that well with our cats either, though... not sure what's going to happen there.

So I was in Seattle for a couple of days, and then in Idaho for a couple of days, and that was fun. Experienced some pretty badass thunderstorms! :D the really exciting one caught up with us in Idaho as we were trying to put the boat back on the trailer; we got blown so far to the side that Dad and I had to jump in the (frigid!) lake and swim the boat to the trailer. Luckily, a construction worker came out to help tow us back to the dock once we were in range for Joy to throw him a rope. fun times xD

Anyway, art! First a speedpaint that I am pretty pleased with:



I've been playing with the more paintbrush-y photoshop brushes, which I conclude are pretty fabulous for smudging, and a splatter brush I made a while ago. Yay texture?
Anyway, the other thing I did recently is a Steampunk outfit design, based on this cute lacy camisole I got at the Mercantile in NoHo a while back. I am thinking of posting it on the Steampunk forum, but I'm tempted to art it up a bit first. To earn more street cred? xD something like that.

oh hey it's that same colorscheme again fancy that


Hah, if only I could sew at all. Aside from hemming pants. xP


...

On a completely unrelated note, I am thinking of changing my lj username to fait_Hunter. It's closer to my real name, and so might be easier for IRL friends to remember? Would it be a bother after being the_tortis for so long? and there is a fee, like $15, not sure if it's worth it... what do people think?

So, what have I been doing when I'm not looking for jobs? Doodling. Of course.
We have here a thumbnail of a painting i might do of these two dudes (dubbed "the Iridescent Bros"), a close up of one of their masks, some crows, a happy dragon dude, and a suspicious-looking guy. Also, I've decided that I need to start my own geek fashion line, called "Strange Attraction." (cuz I warped a Lorenz Strange Attractor there get it, I'm so damn clever) xD Or maybe it should be a brand of perfume? whatever. That funky texture is just some watercolor blobbies I did years ago, I should really make some new textures in different paper, the watercolor paper lines look kind of stupid. xP



(and oh hey is that an unfinished comic page in there? *shifty eyes*)
Augh I need to find a damn job. Or just give up and work on the comic all summer, on the assumption that I''ll actually get that Very Well-Paid Internship for the next 3 summers? That is a terrible assumption to make. :U Though I am going to be making a little money as a TA next semester... the trick being to not spend all of my remaining money before then. Also a bad gamble. :/ If I ever had any luck getting art commissions, I wouldn't have to worry about it, but that's not happening either. bluh, the economy can freaking suck it. >:[

just thought I'd share a random doodle from today:

we all know how I am about my lettuces xD

Your results:
You are Geordi LaForge

Geordi LaForge 70% Mr. Sulu 65% Mr. Scott 50% Chekov 50% Beverly Crusher 50% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 50% Will Riker 45% Deanna Troi 45% Spock 40% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 40% Jean-Luc Picard 40% Data 37% James T. Kirk (Captain) 35% Uhura 35% Worf 30%

You work well with others and often fix problems quickly. Your romantic relationships are often bungled.

Click here to take the "Which Star Trek character are you?" quiz...

Here's what I intend to do this summer:

1) get a job. Anything computer and/or art-related is the top priority, but I'll take what I can get. Pay will be an important factor, but I don't think I want a job that would follow me home- I need a break from homework. x_x  So, Craigslist, here I come.

2) Write NagMe program, which will kick me off the computer for set periods of time! (I may want to learn Cocoa for this?) Also try out some firefox nagging plugins, see if I like what's out there or feel like I need to write one of my own.

3) SPEEDPAINT, ALL THE TIME

4) Learn Blender- Specifically, practice creating environments. I'll probably make some poseable dolls with it too, though.

5) Work on Wind Totems plot, whenever possible. Get chapter 1 detailed enough to START MAKING PAGES OMG

6) Make portfolio site for myself, using Ruby on Rails, CSS, flash, whatever feels good.   
        -write ThumbNailer applet, make adding images to the gallery really easy!


7) Spend some time Being A Good Steampunk ( aka making things):
    -Rave fans :D :D :D
    -armwarmers/spats
    -utility sash/extra pockets
    -shirts/tops? skirts?
    -modded steamgun
    -DIY goggles!

8)Possibly learn PHP and MySQL, just so I know my way around it.

9) learn C? at least familiarize myself a little, try to understand some of the syntactical differences from Java.

My plan for the comic, at first, is to only post pages to the lj friendslist. (Or possibly do a mailing-list sort of thing, because many of the people who've expressed interest in seeing it don't really use lj so much....) Anyway, the point is, I'd only be showing it to people I've met IRL. My reasoning here is that, especially at first, I won't have any kind of regular update schedule.The people I know personally seem like they'll be a little more understanding about updates than a faceless hoarde of anons. ~_~" Once I've built up a nice fat buffer of 200 comics or so, I'll slap together a website and start doing regular updates, starting from the beginning. By that time, I think I'll be settled into the process enough to put out comics at a faster rate, and it'll be a long time before I start getting behind schedule. Yay?

...There are also some plans that *other* people have made for me, which I'll try to accomodate as best I can? There's a guy teaching a course at WSU Tri-Cities on group software development, and how to organize that kind of thing. He and my parents want me to audit the course. It sounds like a skill that I will need in the real world? It also sounds like it could be a lot of work, that I will not be graded or paid for. It might look good on my resume though.... I will show up for the first class today, and see what would be expected of me, and if it is too much I won't do it.
Also, since OMG my little sister is going to Japan!!!, she's going to try to find some Japanese tutoring, and it's been suggested that I should tag along, to stay sharp over the summer... I don't know. I really want the job search to take priority at this point, and worry about the rest later.