SNOW AND MEH

So I've been really funkacious¹ lately-- which is totally unlike me, because this is my favorite time of the year.  I've got all my Christmas shopping done without going so far into debt that I could only pull myself out with a block and tackle, all my presents are wrapped, I got my new computer almost a week early (more on this later) and this morning, on break, I went outside and saw Real Christmas Snow.  

As a short aside-- for those who are either oblivious to snow or just lucky enough to hit the lottery numbers and afford to move away from it, Real Christmas Snow is what I call the snow that reminds you Christmas is near.  It's got its own texture, taste and appearance: big, fat, feathery blindingly white flakes that float to earth like tiny twinkly white leaves in mid- to late December.  Twenty minutes of it falling can turn a dull urban landscape into a sparkling wintry postcard.  I don't much care for cold or snow, but seeing Real Christmas Snow fall-- especially if you're inside with a cup of hot cocoa and a warm fire-- can be a breathtaking joy to behold.  Real Christmas Snow is not to be confused with the spattering "colored rain" snow, sleet, or "wuss snow" that feels like rain and stings your cheeks.  It's big and fluffy and fills you with excitement, even though you know it's probably going to cause you to be several hours late to anywhere you want to go because some moron is inevitably going to lose it and skid his bald-tired Chrysler LeBaron into an embankment on the highway and back up traffic for hours.

Also, as a shorter aside, it should be noted that after Christmas, Real Christmas Snow gets no special consideration whatsoever and instead joins all other forms of snow, which are collectively called "#%@!ing winter weather." (Eskimos supposedly have a hundred words for snow².  I have two phrases: "Christmas Snow" and "Not Worth The Bother Snow.")

At any rate, despite the Christmasy weather, despite everything that should have me in a good mood, for some reason I have been in a really blah mode lately.  I have things I should be (and could be!) writing, I have art that seems to creep in on the edges of my thoughts, I have big ideas that I'd love to see find fruition... and yet, I come home from work, eat dinner, feed the fish, and I just can't seem to get myself to do anything constructive... I just seem to want to veg out, nap and stare out uselessly.  I'm just in a really bad funk, one that even my usual habitual barely-legal drug use can't seem to break me out of.

So I guess I'm a little curious... what do other artists/writers/creative sorts around here do when you can't seem to summon up any motivation and your muse³ is lacking in the way of inspiration?  Do you think of rainbows and flowers and pretty spring mornings?  Do you beat your head into your desk until your brain is afraid not to come up with something?  Do you up the dosage on your Praquisil?  Enquiring minds want to know!

RANDOM THOUGHTAGE

Remember a little while ago, when I was surprised and excited to find that one of the platies in my aquarium, Warren-- who obviously wasn't male-- had given birth to a couple little babies?  Remember how cute I thought it was?

Well, the cuteness has its limits.  Warren's new name is "Broodmare." Apparently she was so happy about the experience that she blew out a total of 10 kids in an amount of time that seems patently ludicrous.  So now there are all sorts of little fish babies in the tank.  Piddles is being crowded and now fears this newfound brood and stays hidden in fear for his very life.  (To be fair, Piddles actually lives every day in a barely-controlled state of fear for his very life from everything up to and including water changes, nets, lights, other fish and food.  But I can see now that Piddles is dangerously close to becoming a dedicated Prosac lifer.)

I was happily surprised to arrive home a couple nights ago and find that my new computer had arrived, so I've been spending the last few hours looking at software installs and getting a feel for Windows 7 and generally getting a geekrection.  (Okay, not really, because the little things like getting my programs back the way I had them tweaked are a little too irritating to really be THAT excited, but it's a definite child on Christmas morning feel) The XPS is a very sleek system, too.  Shiny, reflective black and cool hidden trays everywhere... and it's BIG.  I mean, the box it came in was freakin' gargantuan, like 5 foot tall on its side.  They really don't tell you what a huge case it comes in.  Under my desk, I can barely access the top of the system because it stands so tall.  And it's quiet, too!  I can barely hear the fans!  It's a very primo system!

So now, I have a little more work to do before I'm seriously getting back up to specs... need to install my tablet and scanner and get my old Poser drive installed to get my old runtime stuff back, then install some of my mapmaking software, and really, that's about it.  I'm keeping this one pretty app-light, and won't be doing a whole lot of surfing⁴ on it.  Right now, it does a fair job of rendering quick; I'd kinda like to keep it like that, ya know?

I talked last journal about Apple ads.  I'm expanding that to damned near every ' progressive' cell-phone ad around.  Even the Blackberry⁵ ads are obnoxious, and teh Crackberry is teh shiz.

I do want to take this time out and wish all my watchers, friends, and people who only grudgingly acknowledge my existence a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and happiest wishes to you and yours.

... and that Christmas is my birthday, so if you happen to have any formerly nubile hottie petrification victims just, y'know, cluttering up your house and taking up your storage space, you can feel free note me and twist my arm, and I'd be willing to take them off your hands.  

---

FOOTNOTES

¹ - Funkacious - adj.; adv., feeling as though one is in a funk; depressed; morose.

² - Bedouins likely have a hundred words for sand, too, but no one ever mentions that, now do they?

³ - Mine is apparently named Caligula, and she teases me by scraping poisonous thorns around the inside of my skull.

⁴ - Here being a notable exception.  Well, here and porn sites.  Oh, come on.  It's a waste of a hawt Trucolor 22" flatscreen monitor otherwise!  (Just kidding.  No pr0n except for what I make myself.)

⁵ - My proposed Blackberry marketing campaign - "Blackberry: Everything you could want in a phone, without the stigma of an Apple logo."


STAMP PIMPING



<sub>"When the conversation stops, and we're facing our defeat,
I'll be next to you and you'll be right there next to me, (and I'll say,)
Girl..."
- Weezer, (If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To</sub>

SO HERE WE GO AGAIN

Yep, the good computer's down.  After mucking around with it for a few weeks, we've pretty much given up on the combination of the motherboard and the processor, and we can't figure if it's one, the other, or both that are causing the issue.  Or a combination of factors above and beyond that.

So there won't be a whole lot of 3D work, at least until the beginning of the year, when I can use my tax check to either get a new computer or fix the one I have-- which means a ridiculous amount of upgrading, most likely.  Not sure the direction Im going yet, but I think there's a pretty good chance I'm going new system and hopefully adding my previous hard drive as a secondary drive.  The big thing is that I really need a good desktop to run Poser/C4D/Vue, and I may go ahead and keep it fairly program-free except for the art programs I use and a few minor extras... like Office and a base version of Firefox to download extras for those programs.   Then I'm hoping to do a couple pictures I have in mind that really showcase what I can do with Vue and C4D that I haven't been able to get done before the computer went down.  (Oooo, especially if I can get a more recent version of Vue, which is on my wishlist.   )

So I apologize, especially to the people who watch me specifically for my statue pics.  (And you know who you are.   ) But it may be the beginning of the year before you really see anything new.  

And of course, to the rest of you, I hope I'll have some other stuff up here sooner or later before the end of the year.... Photos, hand-drawn work, maybe some other items.  I'm just really sorry that I'll be missing out on doing my yearly Christmas Bob pic.  

RANDOM THOUGHTAGE

I really seldom watch TV, except during football season, when I watch a lot of games and then kick over to ESPN.  During this season, I can tell you two sets of commercials that have become wildly irritating....

First, the Levi's "Go Forth" commercials or whatever the hell they are.  The black and white grainy video with the overlaid voice-over of some guy that sounds like he's speaking over 1930's radio, spouting random phrases that I guess are supposed to sound either patriotic or majestic-- that or he's reciting really bad free-verse poetry.  Either way, the whole thing just sounds gimpy.  "Pioneers, O Pioneers, tan-faced something or other..." So when did Levi's become Christian Dior and start doing perfume commericals?  Let's see.... Wrangler has Brett Favre, the epitome of man's man, playing football into his forties and sitting on a tractor.  You have a bunch of goofy black and white images of kids dancing with their shirts off around a fire and a guy spouting free-verse poetry.  Which jeans am I going to be more inclined to pick up?  (PS: Here's a clue.  Levi's usually cost about $15 a pair more than most of the jeans I buy.)

Second... in the name of god, Apple, please fire your marketing division.  Or, no, keep them, because the price of your products and your marketing campaigns are the two major reasons I go out of my way to find products that are every bit as good and don't come with the stigma of having an Apple logo on them.  The PC/Mac commercials are okay, although usually they're filled with half-truths, which is what you can expect from a company that is desperately trying to get an even share of the market in an economic dry period, when their products run, by and large, about $500 more per unit than comparable PCs, and have less available software with the OS that comes standard.  You'll note that Microsoft, Intel, Dell or HP don't by and large sit there and mudsling Macs in their commercials.  That's because they don't have to.   And yes, I realize the irony of this considering my own PC troubles.  But also consider that I have owned three computers in my 3D life, and I have still not paid the equivalent money it would take me to own a good Mac.

Anyway, let's go ahead and add the iPod and iPhone commercials to the fray, just because they're annoying.  iPods alone have quite possibly some of the most annoying music, and their iPod color/iPod video commercials show a nice committment to spending as little as possible on commercials while continuing to charge a premium on their equipment.

The BCS is officially a joke.  Not that this is anything new.  But any system that shuts out three undefeated teams simply because they're not in high-dollar conferences is a joke.  And the way Texas barely managed to squeak past a #22 ranked Nebraska team with no offense whatsoever-- and THAT after getting 50ish yards of breaks with a kickoff out of bounds and a horsecollar penalty-- you cannot tell me that they deserve to be in a National Championship game over TCU and Boise State, who blew through their schedules like there was no competition, and Cinncinnati, which beat a #13 ranked Pitt team on their home field for their conference championship.  I was rooting for Texas to lose simply because it would throw the BCS into chaos, but after the game, and after their slim escape in the Texas A&M game, I honestly still don't think they belong in the National Championship game.  

College football needs a playoff.  Or at least an "And 1" game.

I'm PRETTY much done with my Christmas shopping.  I have a couple stocking stuffers still yet to get, but by and large, I'm done.  It's nice being able to relax for the majority of the month.

Of course, as soon as I've done that, Paizo has begun to offer Gift Certificates and gift options.  Doh.  Speaking of Paizo, RPG Superstar 2010 begins in less than a month!

STAMP PIMPING



<sub>"So you were born, and that's a good thing,
So you will die, and that's a shame.
But somewhere in the between, is a life of which we all dream
and nothing and no one will ever take it away."
- Streetlight Manifesto, Somwhere In the Between</sub>

MOUNTAIN FRUSTRATION

So, to add to a nice laundry list of fresh computer issues, my XP profile corrupted and wiped a bunch of my user settings, including my Poser UI and Photoshop settings.  Yay.  I created a new profile tonight, and we'll see how that works.  As it stands, I've just about had it with this computer recently.  The best system in the world does me no good if every time I log on I have to start fresh.  I had a friend who is also a computer guru, and he spent all day yesterday trying to track down what exactly the problem was, all to no avail.

At this point, we're leaning toward the major issue being either the motherboard or the processor.  He ran a buttload of tests last night to see if the problem would be the hard drives, but the problems continued cropping up even after he cloned the C: drive onto a 400G drive and switched it out as the master drive.  He flashed and updated the bios and chipsets, and that didn't work, either.  If the problem is, in fact, the processor/mobo, it'll be tax time before I can get a fix.  Until then, I'll continue nursing this system along, rendering with the affinity settings on, and running checkdisks anytime a blue screen flashes.

Of course that's immensely frustrating, but at least I still have my laptop.  (Knock on wood)

RANDOM THOUGHTAGE

Last weekened, I turned off the light on my big aquarium and started siphoning out the water to clean the tank.  I was repulsed when I suddenly noticed what I assumed was the largest freaking parasite I had ever seen in my life swimming around in the back plants, and nearly lost hold of my siphon.  But when I looked closer, I thought to myself, "That's odd, usually parasites are attached to other fish, not swimming free." And then I had a total WTF moment when I realized that it looked like a little fish!

See, I was under the impression that all the fish in my larger tank were male.  I had three male platies, a pair of cory cats, and Piddles-- a dwarf gourami.  Apparently, one of the platies I thought was male.... actually sorta wasn't, and what's more, (s)he had two babies.  So now there are two tiny little platies who look just like their mother swimming around and growing bit by bit in my 30-gallon tank.  And yes, I know livebearers like platies pretty much could breed in a vacuum, but I couldn't be more thrilled, as this is the first time I've had any fish have offspring.  

Maybe it's just me, but if you're tabletop gaming, you kinda owe it to your fellow players and GM (all of whom are taking time out of their own schedules to play) to actually focus a little on the game.  If you're going to sit around the table, tweet on Twitter with your laptop and just halfheartedly roll a die when it's your turn in combat, then don't bother coming.  If you've had a shat day at work and you're exhausted to the point of not being able to keep your eyes open, then don't come.  No one ever put a gun to someone's head and said that they have to play a game.  Except maybe the Aztecs.  And then it was a club, most likely.

At any rate, this sort of situation happened to me over the weekend, and while I wasn't going to make a big deal about it, the more the night went on, the more it pissed me off.  I'd rather run a game with three players who want to play and are into the game than eight players with two, three or four who are there for social networking.  It's not fair to the other players, it's not fair to the GM.

I recently got myself upgraded to a Blackberry cellwise, and have been ecstatic about it.  I don't text a whole lot, but on the occasions I do, I much prefer the keyboard I have with the BB than I did any cell I've tried using before... on top of that, I like the number of apps it runs; I listen to Pandora on it at work, use the GPS every so often, and have a couple other small things that are cool but not overblown.  It's kinda like having an iPhone without the ridiculous price tag, the constant fingerprints on the touch screen, and the overall stigma of having something with an Apple logo on it.

It's dark right now... at 6 pm.  I f**king hate winter coming.

To those of you whom I fairly regularly get those sordid petrificative commissions from, I cannot thank you enough for the awesome work you've done for me recently.  Thaaaaaank you!  You guys and gals rock like no one's business, and I have some of the best artists I know doing that weirdness for me and never once saying "You're a freak.  Go away now." I'll probably be looking into the lot of ya again once the Christmas rush is over, especially if my overtime schedule continues the way it has!

Also, to all of you who have faved my work, thank you very much.  I don't generally have the time to tell you singly, the way I try to respond to each response on my pics, but I really do appreciate it!

TOTAL GEEKDOM RANT ALERT The first flaw in the Pathfinder RPG came up when I got my new Bestiary, with one of my (naturally) fave creatures.  The Cockatrice entry has its special attack look pretty much as follows:

Petrification (Su) A cockatrice's bite causes flesh to calcify and harden -- multiple bites can cause a living creature to turn into stone.  Each time a creature is damaged by a cockatrice's bite, it must succeed on a DC 12 Fort save or take 1d4 points of Dexterity damage as its flesh and bones stiffen and harden.  A creature reduced to 0 Dex immediately turns completely to stone... BUT, every day a creature petrified in this manner can attempt a new DC 12 Fort save to recover from the petrification, which returns the character to 1 Dex (until healed).  If a petrified character fails three of these Fort saves in a row, the petrification is permanent.

Agreed, I'm totally biased.  I understand.  But WTF... how 4E/Gimpy/No-Child-Left-Behind is that!?  Let's look at that empirically.  The average character will have a 12 Dex... no one but an absolute moron uses Dex as a dump stat because it affects AC, and pretty much everyone uses point buy instead of a much more random die-roll creation matrix.  So they most likely will need to fail at least 6 saves, assuming that more than half of them are rolls of 3 or 4, before they're petrified, temporarily.

And then, on top of that, the DC of the Save is 12?!?  A first-level non-bard has a +2 to their Fort save out of the gate, and by the Cockatrice's CR (3), everyone should have at least a +1 to their Fort save regardless of race/class.  So for a cockatrice to be anything close to an effective deterrent, it will need to hit the same character enough for him or her to fail a more-or-less 50/50 save between 6 and 10 times, at which point, for three straight days, the character can then make a more-or-less 50/50 save for it not to be permanent.  What. The. F**k.

Hello, f**king houserule.  The people who went crying about Save or Die/Save or Suck ("Oh Noooooes, just make everything with any history of causing an instant effect to a PC mass damage, because when my character's out of the game for more than five minutes my little ADD brain can't handle it!") are totally responsible for this BS.  I have no problem with trying to make the game more accessible for the attention-impaired whiner rules lawyers, but taking classic creatures (the Gorgon, I believe, has a similar 'Save till Make' mechanic; I'm looking at others now.) and classic spells and giving them an effective vasectomy is ridiculous.

If a character dying/being put out of play for a while because you missed a roll is too traumatic, and your GM is so cutthroat that he won't allow any sort of workaround to bring the character back, then go play with a good imaginative GM... or just boot up your computer and run a MMO, where they get the large majority of their money from people with short attention spans. </rant>

STAMP PIMPING



<sub>"So you were born, and that's a good thing,
So you will die, and that's a shame.
But somewhere in the between, is a life of which we all dream
and nothing and no one will ever take it away."
- Streetlight Manifesto, Somwhere In the Between</sub>

FANGASM...  ISM...  OR SOMETHING

Those of you who know me at all know that I am an avid tabletop-- and to a degree, Play by Post-- RPG gamer.  

Those of you who know that very likely also know that I've been outspoken in my touting of the Pathfinder Role Playing Game by Paizo Publishing.  Not only does their game continue the tradition and feel of D&D version 3.5 (as opposed to what I feel is the more videogamey, MMORPish feel of Wizards of the Coasts'... er... Hasbro's 4th Edition), but Paizo's Pathfinder line-- from the PFRPG book to the Adventure Paths and Chronicles products-- seems to have a cleaner, more professional look; feels as though it is better edited, and in cases where necessary, quicker with web-available addenda; and has far better quality overall-- ask some people about the smudgery in recent WOTC products.  When I've met the people from Paizo at Gen-Con, there is a genuine "aw shucks" feel to them, too.  They're not full of themselves, they're people like you and me who love the game they created adventures for before WOTC cleaned house, and took control of Dungeon and Dragon magazine... and now love the work they do for the PFRPG.  So at any rate, I've become a pretty hardcore Paizo-ite in the last few months.

So imagine my surprise and glee when, on Friday, I hit the front page of Paizo.com (which I do quite often to see the daily blog of what cool new thing's for sale, much to my wallet's chagrin) and found this little gem, Mega Feats Revisited by Otherverse Productions and Scorched Urf Studios.  Check that link out; you may have to scroll down to where it says "Feats Don't Fail Me Now!".  I'll wait.

Now, in case that graphic doesn't look familiar, here's the original:



That's right, a piece of my very own artwork was not only featured on the cover of a Pathfinder-Compatible Book (okay, okay, PDF, but still!), but it was featured on the front page of the Paizo Store Site! And some of my art is also used for interior illustrations, too!

I have sold off some of my fantasy art pieces under the banner of Darker Age Press, specifically for royalty-free use by FRPG supplement creators.   The fine folks at Otherverse/Scorched Urf bought one of those packs and gave my pic of Keylyn the cover, and Paizo decided to feature it for their storefront blog, and overall, the whole thing has made my freaking month.  (If you buy the PDF-- which natch, I highly recommend-- you'll notice that an editorial goof listed the cover artist as Kenshin, although I got interior art credit.   I've contacted the publishers to tell them, but I'm not frothing about it... Kenshin does some phenomenal Poser work, too, and I know my art when I see it, and I don't know if the decision to put my piece on the cover was a last-minute decision by the editors.   Either way, I'm still in the middle of a fangasm.   )

FINDING GREATER AFFINITY

I know a lot of you follow me for my statue art, and are probably sitting there wondering where the hell all the hottie statuification victims have gotten off to...  after all, since now I have my computer back, shouldn't I be chomping at the bit to put some Poser models into some sort of petrificative peril?

Well, not just yet... which requires a little 'splaining.  And no, it's not because I've suddenly become a eunuch.  

I've got my rendering computer back, yes, but it's still not completely up to snuff.   Apparently, when I do really busy renders in any program (and I should note, most of my renders qualify as busy unless I do them piecemeal), the computer has been really overworking the processor... to the point that it will shut the computer down in the middle of a render.  ossibly an overheat or power management problem, although the fans, power supply and heat sinks are all working fine.  

At any rate, considering that I prefer to use procedural materials for my statues rather than image textures to give my statues what I feel is a much more realistic and visually impressive look, and considering that procedural mats are more memory/processor intensive than wrapping an image texture around the model, that would be what we call a "problem."  Hell, the bikini elves pic, which is a less busy one than many I've done, shut the computer down 5 times in the middle of renders before I figured a way around it, simply because of the procedural sand mat.  That simply won't work.

While waiting to put the computer back into the shop-- actually, giving it off to one of my gaming buddies who does stellar computer work and has specifically asked me if he could work on it to get the bad boy back up to specs-- I've found a workaround to at least get some work done.  I have a dual core processor, so I can go into the task manager and tell XP to only use one core for certain processes in the Affinity Settings.  It makes a render obviously take a MUCH longer time, but for the time being, that's keeping me from being back to square one, and it'll do.

So the statue pics will come, certainly.   But it may be a little while.   Just keep your eyes open.

STAMP PIMPING

[Reserved for Pathfinder RPG Stamp]

<sub>"So you were born, and that's a good thing,
So you will die, and that's a shame.
But somewhere in the between, is a life of which we all dream
and nothing and no one will ever take it away."
- Streetlight Manifesto, Somwhere In the Between</sub>

Reports of my demise have been greatly underestimated.

Working on a couple things, here and there. Hoping to have my 3D programs back up and running at some point soon.



<sub>"Ah, perhaps your mouth says no, my dear lady, but your eyes..... well, okay, your eyes sort of say no, too. And that sword you're pointing at me is looking pretty negative, as well."
- Around the table again at Gen Con.</sub>