Inane Art Workflow

My pattern art is a painful one. Simple in form -- Draw, but complex in execution -- Draw a lot; the art is time consuming at best and suicide inducing at worst. It involves extreme detail which takes place over months of work. All that aside, here is my (for self-reference) workflow:

Find a photo of subject (billy mays)
go to photoshop, black and white it, and cutout filter it.
(note, i dont actually use the cutout filter, but this effect is desired.)
print the simplified work, as if to carve a jack-o-lantern
Trace the outlines in pencil on the canvas at size.
draw, going from most detailed to least detailed areas.

It's that simple!

Video Games Are Fun

Steam had a summer sale. I bought a bunch of games. $50 worth, to be exact.

The highlights so far: (not including TF2, my currently favorite game)

• Multiwinia. A suprise win, this game is sweet!
• Left 4 Dead 2. Playing co-op with friends is amazing
• Chains. Cool, Not-to-hard, Puzzle Game
• Obulis. Pretty, Cool, Inventive, Difficult, Puzzle Game
• Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Plays like a movie, lots of fun.

So this is what I have been accomplishing with my free time. Jealous much?

--

In other news, I am getting better sleep now thanks to f.lux and standing. Yes, while I havnt done an [self] experiment yet, I played a lot of guitar hero recently, 7+hours today, 8+ yesterday. I was standing the entire time, and for the last two nights I have been feeling very well rested. Maybe i might build a standing desk setup with a laptop?

The Book, it is being written, being lived

I feel weird writing stories, one that happened a few days ago, another a few years ago, and putting them together in the book.

Don't really have a title yet. My working title is "The Stories Within". Today i finally put things together into one google doc, and formatted it into one nice neat book with TOC and such layout. Its fun to see what, despite being short, is a book layout. Makes me feel more accomplished towards this damned project.

The system is no longer down

Got my motherboard back from RMA yesterday, and I put everything together today. Took me 35 minutes to find the 1336 adapter for my Thermaltake Spin-Q (my old mobo was 775). After getting all of that put on the EVGA p55 LE (i know, LE, but its still a $250 mobo) and placed inside the Silverstone Raven 2, I was good to go.

A quick RAID setup for my 2 10,000 RPM raptor drives and I was loaded. Installed windows 7, restored from my backup,(some from Mozy, others from Norton Ghost) and -aha! Success.

So what did I do? install software? Update Drivers? No. I played Team Fortress 2. Thankfully I have steam installed on my backup drive, so my games are safe, and i was quickly able to get right back into playing.

Hell yes. Now I need to eat some breakfast.

Feeling productive

Getting my writing fix handled over at 750words.com; I am using it as a motivator to write that book if been blab'n about. But summer is as summer does: nothing. It is difficult to respond to the vicissitude of no school, and i really just want to sleep all day. Ah well, if i exercise, watch a movie, and write 750 words every day (fuck, every other day even); It will be a good summer, even if the multi-touch surface gets delayed over all of it.

Intro to the book

One of my projects for this summer is to write a book. But instead of taking the path of my mother and stressing over hero paths, story plots, and "a good damned idea"; I am going to compile together a bunch of stories. Stories that I already know, and already tell. This is separate from my augmented Conscience project, which is a collection of essays -- My thoughts, not my stories. That is the difference.

I love stories. Stories, for me, is what I am. I love books, movies, music, Small one manned puppet shows on street corners -- whatever it may be. Naturally, I also tell stories. I have been telling stories my entire life, --Collecting many along the way. Whenever My friends and I well, do something, I subconsciously figure out a way and a manner to tell that experience that is entertaining and amusing. So what is this book? This book is a collection of my stories that I have picked up over my years (all 17 of them). I have picked stories that hopefully will be able to read well on paper (or at least a paper-like-display). This excludes the stories that demonstrate how I was piggybacking my 7-foot friend through wall-mart. Disappointing for you, sure-- but i am still confident that you will be happy and entertained with these stories. Unless you illegally downloaded this book, or are reading it in the store without purchasing it. In that case don't be entertained. Yeah, you. If you like what you see, buy it.


Still need to work it over to include less "I"'s and "Story"'s, but I hope this lets you grasp what I am going for here.

Breathe Deeply

Finals have finished. Junior year of high school has finished. It is done. Complete. Kaput. Ceased. Ended. Shut down. Terminated. Over. oh wait. never mind. I have SAT's on Saturday. Right now my only wish is to get tickets to see Phish in august. And CAKE in July. and don't forget Bonnaroo! oh crap, looks like bonnaroo may not happen. Or maybe it will. Whatevs man.

So what does officially being on summer mean? It means I have something good to write for Things That Are Win. I suppose. It also means sleep. glorious, fantastic, unused sleep.

What else is there to say? Without flash builder on Linux, there is little for me to do right now. Ever notice how switching an IDE is difficult? I can't leave Dreamweaver for webdesign. Anybody know any way to get cs5 with both upgrade and student discounts?

Inside of Finals

Finals, the glorious, stress filled time filled with angry repartee's and disgruntled sweatpants. Oh joy. Finals will end Thursday, and - as you can tell by reading these words, My studying is going splendid. I finished english, my supposedly stress-free final. In other words, my teacher only assigned it because she was forced to, not to have an impact on our grades. I wrote an essay about the movie Moon; Which was fine. Now I have to study for math and spanish.

After tomorrow I will never speak Spanish or associate myself with spanish culture ever again, unless I am physically inside of Spain. Hoo-Rah. So close, 6 years of my life, 4 hours a week, about to come to an end.  Hallelujah! Praise whoever! 

In reading my notebook news, I ostensibly want to create "memepedia" or "wiki-meme". I wrote the idea (a wiki of meme information) down at 4:32 last night (I had the forethought of time-stamping it, apparently). After some conscious thought on the matter, It would be a great idea. A completely free resource and user driven reference for internet culture. Problems: I don't 4chan, and I would need to advertise it. To the inter-tubes! I will work it out after finals. For now, I am going to take a 15 minute catnap, hopefully recharging my brain. Hopefully not falling asleep.

Single-tasking

I am writing an article on Single-Tasking vs. Multi-tasking. The article (will be my first using pinboard to research) is going to go over types of productivity, and I am going to hack myself to do nothing but single-task. As little multi-tasking as possible. If I am on a call, I am calling someone. If I am studying, means nothing but studying. This means, and I gasp at myself, no music.

Oh crap. Finals start tomorrow, my school ended last Friday. This weekend is considered by many students one of the most stressful, painful, and worrisome weekends in school. As I work out an "end of school/summer!" post for thingsthatarewin.com - a side project of mine, I am really freaking out. So what is a better way to mend some stress than a nice afternoon of mind-hacking!? I will be going single-task only.

Here is what I usually do:

1. Turn on XM 56, Sirious 17 JamOn station. The best radio station in the world.


2. Sit with my phone on my right, my Ipod on my left. TV is playing in the background, and depending on weather or not I am wearing my noise cancelling headphones, I can usually hear the sopranos going. (hooray for parents trying to watch all of them in a month)


3. Place books in front of me. Computer to left. Dog nearby. I make room on my very cluttered desk


4. Study

Here is what I am going to attempt to do

1. No music


2. Clear Desk to be empty


3. Nothing playing on Noise-Cancelling Headphones (I thought about buying 'Music for airports' but I do not have enough money. In the future


4. Study

Hell to the yes. I will see how it goes. The final article, when I finish writing it, will be part of my 'Augmented Conscience' Project; A collection of essays, rants, and other things with a humorous tone.

Bradford Can't Draw

http://www.bradfordsdog.info

This is what I do when I am bored. Single Serving Sites are awesome. Case in point: thatsnotironic.com

So (for science!) I wanted to collect as many different ways of drawing dog's that I could. I asked bradford to draw me a dog. He said he couldn't draw. I said draw anyway. He did. Bradford's dog (the one with "Chernobyl" incorrectly written above it) was born. Later we did other "Bradford Experiments", having bradford attempt to draw chickens, cats, and even a giraffe. In his defense, Bradford's cat wasn't... completely horrible. We love you, and your inability to draw, Bradford.

If I ever start a production company, I am naming it "Bradfords Dog Productions" and an image of the dog.

Bookmarking

I have recenttly switched from social bookmarking (delicious) to anitsocial bookmarking (pinboard.in). The two sites share similar roots, pinboard being a spawn of delicious to fit needs delicious could not give.

Here is why: I love every social aspect of the web. Communicating with friends, sharing links, ect, ect. I spend most of my web life (when not working, software dev-ing, writing) inside of Google Reader. I subscribe to over a hundred feeds, and read all content almost every day. It is very impressive (and would not be possible if it were not for Google Reader). Anyway, my shared items from Greader is imported into a tumblr blog (ya-rly.tumblr.com); I recommend having people just follow me from within google reader. (go to people you follow, type in hunterdyar@gmail.com, laugh)

Anyway, when I am reasearching a project, I am missing a place to store my links, I generally keep them in a google doc file named accordingly to whatever project. I use Google docs for all my docs thing. running Ubuntu 60% of the time in a dual boot, (7 for adobe, gaming), i do not even have Office installed. I even uninstalled open office. I digress. Delicious does not work for project reasearch, and evernote failed me with lack of organizing features. In the proccess of reasearching multi-touch displays, i found myself storing hundreds of links, videos, and other information on the web. From Flex, Flash, Acrylic, Lasers, Projectors, and many other topics, my list was quite extensive. I shared the doc to a friend helping me on the project, and he gawked. Horrible. Google Docs is awesome, and I use it for research, but not an ideal solution.

In walks pinboard. with a $6.34 sign up fee (as of signing up, price goes up with each new user), I looked over the features, and was sold. I have not had a chance to play with it yet, but it beats linksoftheday.posterous.com (for non-funny shared items).
That linksoftheday blog is in its 4rth form. The first one being nighly emails; first just to my mother, then my sister, then other people who wanted interesting content but did not want to search the internet for it. Anyway, i have yet to set up a system, but i hope to have certain tagged items be shared publicly in the links of the day way that is what it is. Whatever. Know you know why my increasingly social web life (hdyar.com, online identity established!) is turned private: for research and not spamming my friend.

pinboard also had the fastest tech support i have ever received. I sent an email about sign-up trouble, and then refreshed my email inbox. A response was waiting. 38 seconds after I sent the email, and it was a personally typed response from the man who runs the entire site telling me he had manually activated my account. I love it already.

Hoorah for the first post of burning squirrel, which I hope to use to help me track my mind-hacks, projects and other web thoughts. Like a short version of Augmented Conscience - Which I stopped doing publicly, as I want to turn the writings (essays) into an published book.