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November 30th, 2009

02:26 pm - QD's Mutant of the Week Current Location: home Current Mood: amused Tags: art, mutant, quantum duck

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November 1st, 2009

11:40 pm - Long Tall Weekend Webb Wilder on Thursday night, costume assembly on Friday (along with introducing northwall to Carl Sagan's Cosmos), pumpkin carving, trick-or-treating, and Beans Baton on Saturday; we're exhausted. Thank goodness we get an additional virtual hour to sleep in tomorrow morning. A few weeks back I decided to dress as the old man (Carl) from Pixar's "Up". I found decent enough clothes to match his early 20th century formal dullness, and added a huge box shaped head made from cardboard and color print-out's of Carl's features. I spent Sunday in a bit of a haze. Despite weird stress and low energy Aurora and I have gone a number of days without an argument. Instead we seem to be in one of those 'we're falling in love again' places. Luckily nobody feels left out by that a the moment. Having things working between everyone isn't that unusual, but when it's all working and I'm in an 'up' energy place it feels so good I kind of loose myself in the awesome. And really: I should be more worried. I've been somewhat annoyed by the large number of break-ups and subsequent rancor hanging in the air in my social network. Luckily nothing has come to a head as a result, but I live in constant worry over people who have broken up crossing paths, and I hate feeling like there are sides after a break-up. I've worked hard in my own life to create a system where one or the other person choosing not to continue being in a 'relationship' doesn't mean civil conduct and good times are out the door along with sex and snogging. Obviously it doesn't always work out way, even if you try your damnedest, but I stand by what I see as a relatively good record on that front. This week will be filled with LOTS of busy fussing for me. Huge loads of paperwork, bills, and finishing up all sots of artwork all lurk in the shadows of the forthcoming days. Good thing I'm feeling up to the challenge for once. Current Location: home Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: silence (ah) Tags: beans barton, costume, halloween, music, webb wilder

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October 25th, 2009

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October 8th, 2009

01:23 am - I'm too busy For an unemployed guy who's alone at home all day I sure do seem to lack free time. I suppose the fact that I've worked two contract jobs, gone to a major convention, and done a two week family trip this summer has something to do with it. Each week I think I'm finally gonna have free time to finally take on creative projects I've put off for years. I finally lack any excuses for putting off decade long project ideas - and I find I have no interest in taking them on. Looking through sketchbooks and finding old files on the computer reminds me that I'm usually an ideas man. My brain is still full of ideas, but many of them have gone a bit rotten now. Not sure if I should try and continue to take on old projects and polish them into shining bits of my past, or push on to wild new things. I'm getting old enough that I might be running out of wild new ideas. I also have huge amounts of life maintenance to get through. Lots of drama in life, and lots to process from the last year or so. 2008 was a year during which I had a kidney stone, got hit by a hurricane, and spent Xmas morning unconscious in an ER unit. That was followed by a layoff and a variety of personal setbacks during the first half of 2009. Turns out some of that stuff can get a guy feeling a bit down. I'm trying to look at it as an opportunity for life to improve now that it's set such a low bar. I'm thirsty for some good times. I really wish I was sleeping better, since then I could at least start my day and get out of the house before noon. At least I have not hit that classic jobless depression whee you don't bother to get out of bed, or put on clothes. If I turn into the guy who's watching TV in his underwear I WILL have to take drastic action - like putting on pants! Current Location: home Current Mood: bitchy Current Music: silence Tags: art, life, pain

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October 1st, 2009

12:35 pm May this textual indication of my intent to share a celebratory moment or two on this, your annual day of age incrementation, find you in a joyful mood northwall.

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September 28th, 2009

05:24 pm Digital greetings and felicitations upon this, your annual annum rollover, and related festivities rorawillow.

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September 24th, 2009

02:51 pm - Communication Breakdown For most of this week I was without television or internet. It's officially a conspiracy. Two weeks ago my DirecTV began to go bonkers. I had a technician come out, but when he was here everything just happened to be working. It was one of those intermittent problems that are basically impossible to diagnose. While all that was going on, our neighbors got Comcast to install cable on Tuesday night. When their instal was finished we suddenly didn't have cable based internet. ( The tangled tale of wires gone wrong lays here ) Current Location: Home Current Mood: annoyed Current Music: Rat Race on TeeVee Tags: comcast, directv, failure, internet, technology

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September 16th, 2009

06:18 pm Hippo Birdie Two Ewe bibulb!

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August 19th, 2009

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August 10th, 2009

09:52 pm - It's the moment (that everything happens) Today I was meant to get most of my work done on an animation job. Instead I spent many hours waiting at the eye doc for a contact fitting. "Contacts?" You say. "Yes, contacts." I respond with a slight edge to my voice. While in DC my sister suggested I switch to contacts when I finally get my prescription updated. She felt I would look better without glasses (I disagreed) but also pointed out the vision correction is often better with contacts. A few weeks back I talked to eye doc while getting my prescription updated finally, and he agreed that, with my prescription, I'd be getting bad chromatic aberration with glasses. My last two pairs of glasses have had this issue, and it was beginning to drive me crazy. I was also not getting a good steropsis since much of each eye's view was uniquely color shifted. It's bad when your peripheral vision is all rainbow shifted to red or blue. With contacts I'd get a clear correction across my whole vision field, and less distortion from my odd astigmatism. Today I got to try out the contacts for the first time. After a few minutes with them in I had to admit I didn't see very well at all. After the eye doc pointed out I'd unseated the lenses and they were now lodged in my eye lids we adjusted them, fussed, and I suddenly saw better than I have since I was 14. The eye strain of having hard contacts seems manageable. After six hours with them in I still see clearly, and they don't hurt at all. Getting them in and out is a nightmare, since they are so small, but I imagine I'll get the hang of it soon enough. I suspect friends and family will find it odd to see me without glasses. Half the time I see myself it's in the mirror as I brush my teeth, get out of a shower, or get out of bed. Most of those times I don't have glasses on, so I have a god sense of what I look like without them. My wife sees me without glasses often enough to be sort of used to it as well. For everyone else I suspect I'll look like something is missing. I'm still pushing my nonexistent glasses up my nose involuntarily every five minutes or so. ____ Life takes a long time. I'm tired, and I'm only roughly half way through it. I need to sleep more often. Current Location: Our apartment Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: 3-2-1 Contact Theme on YouTube Tags: animation, contacts, glasses, vision

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July 19th, 2009

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July 17th, 2009

12:26 pm Hey cuddlyeconomist, Hippo birdie two ewe! As I get older I seem to find more and more folks who share this day with us. I'll be darned if I don't like 'em all too. (Well, except for the Hoff. Where does HE get off being born today?!!) Tags: birthdays

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July 7th, 2009

03:07 pm - Motion Pictures Moving, for a guy like me, is like hurling yourself off of a cliff and then doing weight lifting while you plummet to your certain death. Actually, I think that moving involves more adrenaline. Yesterday I gave myself a day to relax and rebuild. I set up a lot of stuff at the new place, and tried not to think about what was left to do in the old place. Setting up the entertainment center, and building Finn's room out, and unpacking things made me feel like I was starting to create order and a sense of home. I REALLY needed that. The process also has Aurora and I talking seriously about where we are emotionally. She continues to be a source of inspiration and sanity for me. I only hope she feels the same about me, since I've been in bad way this last week or so. I had some suspicions I really loved her, but it's nice to discover new depths and surprises in our love even after so many years. In the evening Aurora wanted to do another run to the old house. Luckily a friend asked us to check in on her sister. I was able to bring her a meal, and fuss after her rather than freaking over packing. It was a good use of everyone's time. I enjoyed hanging out with a new person, and she seemed to enjoy having company, even if it WAS a stressed guy who insists on doing dishes. Our old place is still filled with every manner of old trinket and random item. It will take all the time we have left before our vacation to clear out the house. I did another run over there this morning to gather up the remains of the downstairs office. I have cobbled together one computer to rule them all from my three previous systems. I now have two HUGE monitors on the system, but it is no longer connected to the TV directly. We'll see if I want to get a longer DVI cable and hook the computer in directly. I suspect so. The PS3 is pretty good at showing AVI files, but I have my iTunes stuff to watch and hear in the living room too. Current Location: new apartment Current Mood: anxious Current Music: silence (ah) Tags: move, stress, tv

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June 14th, 2009

10:25 pm - Great Weekend Thursday night my stomach flipped. My lower gut suddenly felt it was perforated by steel talons, and would not stop feeling bad. I didn't throw up, and trips to the restroom changed nothing. I spent the entire night being not quite able to sleep. Most of Friday I found myself in exquisite pain on the couch and barely awake. I had a mild fever, and was in a kind of crazy daze. My wife got home from a half day and attempted to nervously quiz me about how to administer care. I was too out of it to give her a set of tasks to make me feel better. Luckily by 4 or so in the afternoon I began to get my land legs back and decided to just head out to Austin and try my best to have a great weekend. I'm glad I did, since that's exactly what happened. Catching up with Austinites (Which clearly means rocks from Austin) is always good, even if we missed a few of our favorites. We got to go to New Braunfels and spend most of Saturday lazily drifting in water on tubes. It was odd being so close to rorawillow's Canyon Lake family hideaway now that it is no longer occupied. We used to go there all the time, and it was with a heavy heart we considered that Canyon Lake is no longer someplace we can drop in on her marvelous family. A part of me wants to buy a place there now. The river was filled with tattooed young people. Drinking, smoking, and loud music drifted along the river with us, as too did toned bodies, skimpy suits, and sunglasses. I was amused that we didn't seem to stick out as old and awkward folks as we often do. We had room enough to keep to our own, and none of he craziness was too bothersome. I was even able to have a number of fun conversations with random people on the river. I cut my hair shorter on Friday, and we all managed to look pretty slick for crazy old folks. Sadly our return trip back form the river was interrupted by a massive tire blow out on the freeway. Happily the car didn't buck, and I was able to pull over and remove the completely shredded tire and get the spare on without too much trouble. northwall used Google 411 to locate a nearby tire shop, and we were back the road with new tires in 45 minutes. Sadly, new tires are expensive, but the ride is So much better than the two we had. We'd replaced two of the tires a year or so ago, but these two were still the original treads. Their time was coming soon. Hanging out at northwall's was awesome. We do not visit her often enough. My son and I hid out at her place during the post-Ike power outage, but I had not been back since. We need to fix that. I suspect that will naturally occur as I seek out job opportunities. Current Location: Home. The home we're selling soon Current Mood: amused Current Music: Mythbusters on TV Tags: car, family, friends, fun

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June 12th, 2009

10:43 am - I'll Miss Her Philo. From March of 1941 to today, a single NTSC receiver based television would be able to faithfully show you what was on television every day of every year. Color was certainly added in the 1950s, but the signal had to continue to work with black and white sets. A traditional black and white tube based RCA set constructed in 1948 would still faithfully transmit a black and white image of Judge Judy onto its curved phosphor surface up until today. Several of the local analog NTSC signals already seem to have gone down here, and tonight the rest will follow. I learned NTSC in college, and was taught its bizarre idiosyncrasies, difficult field order issues, and it's complete incompatibility with film frame rates. That knowledge becomes knowledge of a time gone by as of today. My engineering skills in a television broadcast control room no longer apply to the real world. Jet-setters will be able to use their NTSC receivers for a few years in Central America, Japan and Canada, but my portable television is losing channels already. A part of me wants to sit up and watch vigil over the analog signals as they are snuffed out. Keep in mind that AM radio continues to work the way it did in 1906. Analog television only lasted 68 years or so, but radio continues. In most theaters you're still seeing 35mm film stock which is almost completely unchanged from the 1892 film standard. A Bell telephone from 1889 could be wired to a modern telephone jack and used to receive calls. (It would not be able to dial out since it lacked a dial or pushbutton system.) Odd that, of all the ubiquitous 20th century technologies, television shifted the most quickly. Current Location: home Current Mood: melancholy Current Music: UHF- Weird Al Yankovic Tags: history, ntsc, television, video

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June 11th, 2009

12:10 pm - I feel the earth move under my feet I fixed up the bicycle on Tuesday. All it needed were a few tightened bolts and fresh air in the tires. I hadn't ridden it since mid December. As soon as I got on I felt like all was right with the world. I forget how much I need to feel like I'm flying along at high speeds to feel real joy. Driving the Fit can bring me a sense of wild abandon from time to time, but being on a bicycle has a sense of raw speed that even a good highway cannot give me in a car. I've been cycling downtown from home and hanging out with my wife during her lunch break, and then cycling back home. It's just under three miles each way. Nothing radical by bike. I've done that jaunt by foot relatively recently. I'll probably have to step up my distances soon. As a warm up to getting active again it feels really good. Since I'm riding in the mid-day sun I really have been losing lots of water, but that means I break an honest sweat and feel like I've done something active as I lounge at home in AC with a tall mug of water. Too bad the sun is destroying my hair, and my arms are getting too much sun. Sometimes I envy my melanin producing friends. Current Mood: cheerful Current Music: I'm Burning - Jesus Jones Tags: bicycle

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May 14th, 2009

01:39 am - It's Official Clickmedia goes from endangered to extinct. Claire let it be known today that Click is no more as a corporation. She was a good ship in many ways, and she sailed rough seas for many years. It took rougher waters than anyone ever expected to take her. As you can see in the link, three new companies are emerging from the remains. One of those is Creative Pulse Media. That's the one I'll be hitching my wagon to. I'd always be willing to work with the web team as well, but I suspect I have few of the core skills they'll need. That said, I also need to seek opportunity elsewhere. My first love will always be video and animation, so I'm ready to dust off eYE iN tHE hAT productions as a real company. eYE iN tHE hAT will be contracting with Pulse Media in the creation of corporate media, but I will also hang the shingle for others. I hope to crack my knuckles and finally learn the ins and outs of Unity, so I can pursue iPhone game development directly under the eYE iN tHE hAT name. I also have my same old pile of ideas for other projects. Time to dust off my brain-bins and begin doing great things again. Unfortunately I'm tired as heck, and need to finish this one last Click project before moving on to leaner pastures. The last month has drained my will even as it has inspired my soul. Oh, and I spent the evening at the local comedy club scoping out the talent. The room was mostly comedians trying out their material yet another time as they hone a tight act of 3-5 minutes. I have about 2-3 minutes of B quality material, so I don't think I'm ready yet. I also have to work on my patter. My deadpan is good, but I need a more up tempo voice for explication and linking material. Current Location: home office - for myself from now on Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: To Love Somebody - Jenerators Tags: animation, comedy, job, life, video, work

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April 22nd, 2009

03:54 pm - Shifting Winds For Earth Day I visited my child's school to watch the kids fly kites. Kites seem to be a strange and alien object to the kids of T. H. Rogers, and I wonder if that's just because Houston is such a bad city for kites. We watched kids try their best to get mylar Barbies and Spidermen to soar, but mostly they fell to earth and tangled badly. Wild gusts from three different directions made it tough to get a kite up, and too many kites in a small space was a formula for disaster. My son got tangled up in kite string from multiple other flyers as they all ran around, and he now has a lovely miniature rope burn on one arm as a result. It was sad to see that his ability to communicate with teachers and students at school is about as good as his ability to communicate with his parents. I think we need to work on basic socialization tools. To bad he has no real neighborhood of kids to hang out with. Perhaps my standards are just different. As a child I had a very good kite, and it was normal to go out and ride the wind with it. It had a huge wooden spool with a small metal guide for the string, and the tail had knots all the way down along it. My father and I did surgery on it from time to time, and I recall it laying around the garage workshop as a result. All the kids had kites like that back then. When I was young the wind was strong where I lived. The midwestern hills would keep a kite bouncing along the gusts indefinitely if you could tug it just right to bounce from gust to gust, and tack into the shifting breezes just right. I don't really know why it was such a big deal for me as a kid, but it seemed like magic to me. I was flying. I suppose kite flying is just one of countless activities that seem to have disappeared today. My son doesn't go fishing, catch frogs, bicycle along streets and paths, build forts, etc. His world is both smaller, and bigger, and it makes me wonder what his world will be like when he is an adult and I am old and grey(er). Hopefully it won't be too different a world for potential kite flying when my son's children step into the sun. Current Location: home Current Mood: anxious Tags: earth, kite, son, wind

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April 21st, 2009

09:44 am - Surprises My wife and I fight endlessly so we won't have to admit how much we need each-other. We fear how vulnerable we are to this other person who is as flawed as we ourselves are. We both throw indignities and accusations at the other to create an endless gauntlet of difficulty - hoping that it will be perceived as the confetti of our endless wedding march. I worry endlessly and show off to the world out of fear that I've already failed at the only things that matter to me, and she hides in a lovely coiled shell for the same reason. In those rare moments when we are both awake and we actually see ourselves there is no doubt that all this silly posturing is a tiny thing in the face of the awesome and scary bond we share. When those moments come, even if we're tired and still worrying about the endless list of issues we each carry - we are there for one another, and the world goes still for us. The peace we yearn for, yet fail to think we'll ever find, is suddenly upon us as if it had always been there. Then the front door bell rings. It is 2 in the morning. It seems impossible that someone we know would seek us out at this hour. I decide the world is full of strange synchronies, so I'll go answer it. Perhaps even at this late hour it will be a face I recognize from our gallery of intimate portraits. Even so, I'll need to cover myself with some clothes. No. it's a guy with the wrong address looking for a playmate. His well coifed head and tight shirt compliment his still firm physique. He smiles at me and compliments me. He wants sex, and apparently I'll do for his purposes. I apologize and tell him he has the wrong house. He smiles and asks me if I'm sure. I assure him it is so. He offers me money. Perhaps I am gay for pay? No, I tell him. I sometimes wish I swung that way sir, and I could certainly use the money, but I'm sorry. He walks off, disappointed that I don't want him, and I go back to bed. In the same way that this house has been trouble for me at times, it can also remind me of my good choices. Here's to my green door, even if it IS still silver. Current Location: home Current Mood: amused Tags: home, neighborhood, wife

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April 16th, 2009

12:32 am - Aversion Crisis I try to keep the personal crisis posts down to a minimum, but lately that has also meant keeping my posts in general down to a minimum. Finally I have a crisis that isn't about how I've hurt myself or others, or been damaged by the slings and arrows of financial misfortune. No, my crisis of the moment is the realization that when I joined my job in LA I set aside all hope of being an artist of any real sort. My goal was to use my craft and skill to make a living for my new son, and set aside dreams of being anything else. Funny thing is, to try and find work I've had to go over my collection of art and sketches, story ideas, and other forgotten dreams. While I've done this I've also watched as Beans begins to rebuild the dream of being yet another kind of artist, and watch as bassfingers pursues the more purified forms of my artistic stomping grounds. While I've frittered away my free time in a kind of personal creative cocoon my friends and relations have begun the hard work of making creative spaces safe for dreaming. I could grab a shovel and get to work myself, but I find that what made me stop so long ago wasn't really a desire to support a family and be there for my wife and child. What stopped me trying was fear and boredom. I get bored of my own dreams and ideas. They take too long, and I find I stop caring far too quickly. I have enough skill and enthusiasm that I can be paid to realize dreams, but I don't have a drive inside me forcing me to do art for myself. I give up far too easily, and projects become part of the creative pile around me. Like so many artists, I get stuck, but unlike my heroes, I go watch TV and assume I'll have another chance to be great another day. So, I'm intending to make some lists of important creative crap. I'll attempt to force myself to push through the inertia and give voice to as many unspoken ideas as I can. No more albatross of unfinished dreams from years past. Current Location: home Current Mood: apathetic Current Music: silence Tags: art, friends, music, tv, work

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