Circadian Shift

Taking a break. Back in a while.

The fun continues over on Blamblog, where Admiral Blamb and his intrepid crew continue to do battle with a giant trans-dimensional Kenny Rogers.

Here's a quick recap of the story up to this morning, while the latest episode demonstrates the fearsome power of Bernard Sumner lyrics.

palmOne Tungsten T5 Handheld:

• 320 x 480 colour display
• 256MB storage
• Intel 416MHz XScale Processor

Drool!

BTW, I'm still soldiering on with drawing classes.

As I've mentioned/claimed before, I can do linework, and I can also handle colour. However, trying to render stuff in monochrome has been a real bugbear for me.

I've also been struggling with finding a drawing medium that I'm really comfortable with. As much as I love the look of Conté, I've had very little luck in getting it to work for me. I've had better luck with charcoal (having tried a couple different kinds), and suprised myself this past Wednesday by producing not-too-embarassing results with good ol' graphite pencil. Evidently, I need to spend a lot more time practicing with this stuff.

Meanwhile, N has been attending the classes with me, and has turned out to be the star pupil of the group:

(Again, I reiterate -- this is N's work, not mine. Bravo, N.)

Lastly, a rambling post of mine such as this one wouldn't be complete without some links:

• ArtLex is an "Art Dictionary for artists, collectors, students and educators in art production, criticism, history, aesthetics, and education"
• Here's a site called Drawing Materials and Drawing Techniques -- an Introduction
• Notebook is an interesting-looking, if somewhat convolutedly organized, collection of "Visual Arts References and Resource"
• About.com has a newbie-friendly guide to Drawing and Sketching

And here are two more that I dug out of the Circadian Shift archives:

• Ideography has a tutorial titled "But I Can't Draw" available for download
• Art Studio Chalkboard offers a bunch of lessons on drawing and painting

Yeah, well, what is there to say at this point.

As is wont to happen, whatwith procrastination and getting sidetracked elsewhere, I still have not even finished Phase 1 of what I set out to do over a week ago.

As well, something has gone amiss with the MP3 Blogs Aggregator, although I've heard that the RSS feed is still functional. Fortunately, Herr K does a decent job of keeping on top of music download news.

Meanwhile, I've been "helping" Brett deal with a giant hyperdimensional Kenny Rogers that has infested Blamblog. Uh, yes, it's wierd. But, hey -- I like wierd.

Will post some more eventually...

Right.

If I haven't updated this monster in the next week, will someone please freaking well slap me....

Meanwhile, feel free to peruse the sidebar. And -- if you've got the drive space and bandwidth -- visit the MP3 Blogs Aggregator often. Very often.

See you in a week.

Holiday Monday found me doing the usual afternoon wander through the Annex. I couldn't help but marvel at the people sitting on the patios in 8 degree Celsius weather, hell bent on catching fading rays of sunshine.

Fall is here. sigh

Newly uploaded to Circadian Shift: The Outpost:

• "Cherry Coloured Funk" by The Cocteau Twins (MP3; 3,026 KB) -- Heaven or Las Vegas has the distinction of being the last album I ever bought new on vinyl. Something about the songs on this disc never ceases to conjure images of cloud-streaked skies, with a dying sun bleeding hues of orange and magenta.
• "Protection" by Massive Attack (MP3; 7,346 KB) -- The warm, bubbling, synth-line and Tracey Thorn's plaintive, throaty vocals make this track the sonic equivalent of being wrapped in a big fuzzy blanket.

If that's not enough moody listening for you, The Suburbs Are Killing Us is featuring two versions of the song "Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime" -- Beck's rendition, as from the soundtrack of the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, plus the 1980 original from The Korgis.

Stoli is optional.

Friday is drawing to a close, but you can still enjoy this week's selection of animal pix (invertebrates too!), courtesy of The Modulator.

Funky Friday! (And hiphop too!)

• James Brown is Talkin' Loud and Saying Nothin' (jeez, sounds like my week at work), courtesy of Silence is a Rhythm Two
• Totally Fuzzy links to tunes by Afrika Bambaata
• Splotch! says Give Up the Funk
• The Weed Files features tunes whose genre matches the word "hop" (caution: Windoze Audio)
• lastly, here's a mind-bogglin, drool-inducing collection of oldschool hip hop -- too many goodies to mention

Get down!

While scanning the list of my fellow Flappy Birds in the Blogosphere Ecosystem, I stumbled across Ravings of a Corporate Mommy.

Favourite line:

I gotta stop mixing Dayquil and Sudafed. Wow! Is that flower talking to me? Hey! Flower! Are you talking to ME?!

Mmmmm.... Dayquil and Sudafed....

(I started putting this post together sometime back in August, but never got around to finishing or posting it)

Links about verbal combat and sleight-of-hand:

• Conversational Terrorism
• Thirty-eight dishonest tricks which are commonly used in argument, with the methods of overcoming them
• Tricks and Fallacies
• Fallacies, tricks and errors
• The Power of Words: Advertising Tricks of the Trade -- Part One and Part Two
• A Fish Story--Or Not? -- "Behaviorists tell us that lying is innate to the human species and comes about for two genetically programmed reasons: to receive rewards and/or to avoid punishment."

About critical thinking:

• The Critical Thinking Process -- notes from the ever-thoughtful Dave Pollard
• Critical Thinking on the Web -- mondo resource site

There there's:

• 14 Workplace Personalities and How to Handle Them

Lastly, if all else fails:

(Belated thanks to my brother for sending along the link to that pic.)

First drawing class tonight.

I can do line, but I can't shade. Tonight's subjects for drawing (oversized face parts in blocks of plaster) required lots of shading.

I wound up drawing several pages of what appeared to be mutant toast. Angry mutant toast.

Drawing things that don't look like anything is much easier.

*sigh*

I've been happily using Opera as my default browser at home for the last couple of years, but I find it's been really crashy on me lately.

So when I started up Firefox this evening, I checked the little box to make it my default browser instead.

However, I'm now finding that it's not integrating with Star Downloader properly (I'm using the Free Version), which is very annoying, given my MP3 harvesting binges of the last while.

*sigh*

Addendum (07 October 2004): Fixed the integration problem with Star Downloader -- turned out that some of my QuickTime settings had gotten changed somehow. Back to downloading mayhem.

I signed up for some drawing classes, which start tomorrow. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to use the part of my brain that doesn't wrangle spreadsheets.

Meanwhile, I've managed to dug up the stylus to my old Wacom tablet, so I once again have an alternative to my mouse for GUI-based computing.

Said tablet and stylus also allow me to easily make little scribbles like this:

Yes, I am cranky once again.

Go find some music to listen to.

The good news: I cleared a whole bunch of stuff off my desk, rescued the notebook PC that was buried underneath (said PC now neatly stored elsewhere), cleared up some of the maelstrom of cables under the desk, and now have my DSL modem, router, and USB hubs nicely arranged on some mini-shelves that I've set up on the desk.

The bad news: Much of the stuff that was on the desk is now on the bed. That thing that I sleep on. And am supposed to be going to sleep on soon.

D'oh!

(pic is from morguefile)

I've been liking my little Hipster PDA that I put decided to try out a couple weeks back.

I find the 3x5 index cards work for me better than the little 3x5 notebook that I'd had stashed in my "purse" before -- they provide a stiffer writing surface, and the blank space (I bought unlined index cards) allows me to switch between "portrait" and "landscape" orientation, to draw diagrams, and basically to scribble any way that I damn well please.

The cards has been a good dumping ground for little things and ideas that float around in my brain and tend to come to the fore when I'm sitting on the subway, or eating lunch, or whatever.

43 Folders, from whence the Hipster PDA concept came, offers many more tips on productivity and the like. Definitely worth a look.

(pic is from stock.xchng)

For those of you who go all ga-ga over pictures of cute 'n fuzzy animals (and some creatures who are neither), The Modulator has taken to compiling a bunch of links each week in his new 'Friday Ark' segment. Find the first two installments here and here.

Meanwhile, Sonic Sunset has been piling on the good tunage in their latest sets of DJ mixes. Much enjoyable listening awaits.

The MP3 Blogs Aggregator has been steadily adding to its roster of feeds. The resulting onslaught of music links is both delightful and fatigue-inducing, but at least I will never again lack for new music to listen to.

Meanwhile, from a couple of sites that are not featured on said aggregator:

• Graig is featuring a 21 minute retrospective of The Beta Band
• Torchomatic has retro goodies from Sharpe & Numan, OMD, and The Monroes

On the visual side, Low Morale has a new Flashtoon up. I think we've all been in meetings like this:

Go and see the whole thing.