out of the blue

For any of you artists, there's a pretty useful artist on DeviantArt who does a lot of good, simple tutorials.

cedarseed on deviantART

His tutorials:

• Guide to Drawing the Body
• Basic Animal Anatomy
• Color Theory
• Drawing the Horse
• Asian Dragons Tutorial
• Arabesque Made Easy part I
• Arabesque Made Easy part II

Some of these are more useful than others, and I would particularly point you to his "Guide to Drawing the Body". It's really nice, elegant, and contains a lot of information in very little space. Also, the Arabesque designs are really awesome.

Mother nature tried to kill me today. I never realized how much of a dirty fighter she is.

I strolled along the street, minding my own business, and I realized that an aura of evil pressed in on me from all sides. I had been being attacked for the last month, and I rarely even noticed. She was trying to soften me up for her final blow.

Some people think that spring and summer are the times of the greatest goodness, where the cycle of the year has come away from the cold and dim winter days, turning to the glorious sunshine and chirping birds of the summer months. They are mistaken. For in this misleading time of new birth and flowering plants, nature's oppression reaches a horrendous height. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the evil Duke of Allergies rules the world in these so-called "cheery times".

I had been resisting her attacks, without even resorting to medication but for once, so nature decided to send her minion out to take care of me. I knew nothing of her plot.

It was with a free and easy mind that I walked up onto the grassy, nature-infested field on the top of the powerline hill. Guilelessly I sat down upon the log, and without care brushed against the assorted plants surrounding me. Little did I know that they were the most dangerous thing on the hill besides myself that afternoon. Before 15 minutes had gone by, I began to feel the effects, beyond the everyday influences of the grasses. My arm began to take a ghastly look, covered in unseemly lumps. Small bumps covered my flesh, and began to spread.

You average man may have quailed and given up hope in that moment, but not me. I was too strong-willed, and I determined to show Nature that if she's going to try and take me out, she'd have to use more powerful forces. After a shower and some baking soda, I wasn't even feeling the effects of the dastardly poison; a few hours later the effects began to fade even from the eyes.

Yes, Nature. You failed. Next time send someone who can get the job done. A bolt of lightning, or a tornado. Soccer-ball sized hail might do it too. But anything less, and you're gonna lose! You hear me, MOTHER? BRING IT ON!

Seeing how popular my last journal was, I think I'm going to post one with a little bit more of a useful element.

I'm looking for new music. Music I'd like. Good music.

The problem is that it's hard for people to guess what sort of music you'd like. So, I'm going to give you a starting place. Here are some groups that I really like. I've got a pretty wide range of taste, I think.

• Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (with variations)
• Queen
• Elliott Smith
• Electric Light Orchestra
• Elton John
• Billy Joel
• Simon & Garfunkel
• Belle & Sebastian
• Jack Johnson
• The Beatles
• Credence Clearwater Revival
• Flogging Molly

Okay, there's a start. If you have a song or a band I should listen to, post here. Tell me what the song or band is, and why you think I'd like them. If it's a band, point out a specific song or songs that you think I'd like.

I will now win every argument I ever get into! Yes!!!

( How to be persuasive )

I think Nathan will particularly appreciate this.

Yesterday (May 30) was the lovely Ann's birthday. For it, I painted a quick thing in Corel Painter, and when I showed it to other people, they said that it was very different from what I normally do. I agreed, but I think I'm going to show it off, and give Ann some more birthday publicity at the same time.

What do you think?

I decided I wanted to understand exactly how RSS 2.0 feeds are written. So, I wrote one for my site. Yes, that's right, folks! My site now has Really Simple Syndication! So, if you're at all interested, you can use your favorite aggregator and subscribe to my feed, and see whenever I add anything new (and I remember to update the feed, of course). I'll try my best to keep them synched.

Oh, what is that you say? You don't know what RSS is? Well, have no fear, because Mr. Super Wikipedia Man is here to explain everything!

What's that you say? You don't want to click on a link to get the information? But he's a superhero! He'll feel so neglected… Okay, well, let's make a compromise. I'll do a really quick explaination about what it is, and you have to use WikiMan to find out more.

RSS is XML, which is used to store pure information (with organization), used for the task of providing news. It might be a summary of headline articles for a newspaper. It might be entire entries for a blogger (Blogger and LiveJournal both have newsfeeds). RSS essentially makes available information to anyone who can access it, and gives them the means to reformat it however they choose (if they know some crazy programming stuff) or to use a program to view it.

I've been using RSS feeds for a few weeks in order to check all of my friends' blogs who don't have LiveJournal, to check Slashdot, and to check all the other blogs that I read (the people I don't actually know). Instead of going through a list of bookmarks, I just have to click one button, and then I can open all of the new feeds at will.

The program I have been using is RSSOwl, but only because I don't know of any better ones. If someone more experienced in the arts of RSS eating could point me to a better one, I'd love to try it out.

Anyway, the point is that I am now syndicated. You can check the feed for new updates. Go be happy!

My beverage told me to shut up today.

I'm sometimes impressed with the audacity of telemarketers. I can't imagine that they are able to sell anything to a large percentage of people who they call, but they still are very persistent and they often don't give up. Even when you tell them that you're not interested.

Them: Blah blabhla thja dleg Direct TV blaehhh….

Me: I don't think I'm interested.

Them: Believe me, if you just listen to the promotion and then decide, I believe you would be interested.

Me: No, I really don't think I'm interested. *click*

Apaprently I'm not the best person to decide what I am interested in. Perhaps they should assume that if someone declines their offer, that the person has a good idea what they're selling, and really isn't interested. Maybe it's just me, but it's just absurd when people keep talking long after you tell them "No thanks."

At least they make for funny joke material every once in a while. If you haven't heard Kendall tell you about HIS fascinating encounters with their ilk, then you should ask him to relate the experience.

I just tried to use Thunderbird to log into my hotmail account. The response?

"Sending of password did not succeed. Mail server localhost responded: negative vibes."

Okay, I saw Ewan McGregor in Star Wars today. I was very impressed with his acting in Moulin Rouge, so I looked him up on IMDB. What I found was this, an animated film scheduled for release in 2006:

Plot summary: "Romance blooms between indoor and outdoor garden gnomes."
Title: "Gnomeo and Juliet"

This is too odd to pass up. (A note: Kate Winslet stars as Juliet.)