Halloweeeeeee..n...n...

Halloween is almost upon us. Weeee... how the hell did it get that name? Some "ween" that was hallowed? For what? Being the great reason to put candles inside pumpkins? Or maybe that's it! Pumpkins were called weens once, and they were made hollow. Hollow the ween day...

Some people at work really got into the spirit of Halloween. There was a company party, where lots of UN-costumed people brought their costumed kids over. Lama and I were pretty much the only people from the company who dressed up in costumes. I a knight, Lama a viking short of his horned hat. He did have an axe. Might have trouble taking that back to Austria. Yeah, he was personally invited by Arnold "The Govena" to come work. Not really, but that would have been cool.

I used a program that came with my Mac called Comic Life. It's really meant for people to do funny stuff with the pictures they have in iPhoto, since it's kinda integrated into that. Those fortunate enough to have the utilities to draw get to use it to make their crappy cartoon sketch look more out of place with more professionally looking because of the speech bubbles. But that's just my opinion :) My cousin and I hated it when we got pennies instead of candy on halloween. That stuff adds up and it feels more heavy than we feel rich.

I'm getting used to my tablet. I think I've experience quite a few different ways to draw on a laptop. The first way was to draw on paper, scan and use the little pointer "nub" in the middle of some PC laptops. I got pretty good at that actually, but it was wicked slow. The second was the more straight forward, monitor is a tablet. I loved it, but expensive. I think my tablet is a happy medium, but man...if I could afford the tablet monitor, then that would be the way to go. I also wish Photoshop and/or Illustrator weren't so GODDAMN EXPENSIVE!

Catch up to Sue's (Sat - Tue)

Wow. It's already Wednesday. Sorry for not posting for a while. It's mainly because nothing that interesting happened for a few days. Well, other than how that came to be. On Saturday, after I came back from karate, I was supposed to go to San Francisco, via CalTrain with a friend. His name shall be known as Lama and he has a blog in German!. Anyway, we were supposed to meet up in the train or at the station in San Fran, once we agreed on the time. He assumed we were going at noon and I ended up waiting for an email confirming the time. So nothing happened Saturday.

Then on Sunday, I was supposed to go to Sue's Indian Restaurant with a friend of a friend. On the same day, a bunch of people were going to Santa Cruz to go surfing, but because of their schedule I couldn't go. About an hour before I was supposed to call, Patty (the friend of a friend) left an email asking to reschedule for tomorrow! Yes, it was a woman. No, it wasn't a date, just dinner. So I ended up shooting that day, and I had a feeling something like that was going to happen. That's why I bought Contact for my Nintendo DS. Good game so far. I should hurry up and beat it before Final Fantasy XII comes in.

So on Monday, Patty and I went to Sue's, finally. My verdict is that the food is pretty good, but the service could be better. I don't have pictures now, because I didn't have a camera. However, Patty had a camera phone, so she took some pictures, which I still need to get from her. Anyway, they screwed up my order a little. I had ordered something that comes with naan, but there wasn't any when it came. I happened to order some garlic naan, and I think they gave me a free one with it because of the earlier screw up. I suppose that's good, but it would have been better if I didn't have to ask. That part aside, I would say a 4/5, compared to Saravana's 3.5/5 score that I'm not giving.

Finally yesterday, I went to karate again. We had a mixed group of a lower belt, white, and some brown/black belts. I was expecting a bit more harder training, but it wasn't. For now it's a good thing because I haven't really trained hard for about a week, but I hope it's not always like this. The instructor at the time, who's the head instructors student, seemed to talk a lot. It kind of reminded me of something my sensei in Chicago told me, which was that sometimes I try to teach too much. You need to keep the students excited, moving and active in the beginning to feel like they're doing something. Every once in a while give them a nice treat, with a slightly advanced technique, just so that they get more interested. Kind of like a fishing hook. Once you hook them (i.e. they're getting serious about training) then you teach details, but before then it should be about repetition and building up basics in an interesting/exciting way. It may sound simple, but after you've trained long enough it seems more easy to teach the details at the time hoping that every time after they know how to do the technique correctly. In fact, it's almost tempting to just lecture about it, which was what happened yesterday, kinda. I guess that must be what academia does to you? Where the truth really seems to be closer to, but maybe not exactly that you only teach one detail and repeat over and over the technique with the one detail in mind. Then as you build one detail after another, with fun stuff to do every now and then, you end up refining the individual. Great example my sensei uses is math. You learn on thing about math and you repeat again and again, then you learn the next thing. Then those annoying word problems, where you have to read a story to understand the math problem, were the exciting advanced technique/problem. I didn't like word problems as a child.

Quarter of a Century!!!

I'm 25 today. Wow... about 1/3 of my life is pretty much gone. Can't get it back. Amazing. So I went to Karate training today. That was my birthday gift to myself, plus the previous purchases of the tablet, the digital camera and season six of Stargate SG-1:) I still have to get that desk in the room. Currently I have the corner end of the desk. You'll understand after I take a picture when it's up.

Yesterday I saw Fearless, Jet Li's supposedly last martial arts movie. I asked someone in the line if that was true, and he told me that he apparently signed on to do a movie with Jackie Chan. Damn him for trying to be the Micheal Jordan of Wu-xia movies. Well...it's not so bad that he's doing that. Whatever.

I'm gonna go into the city today, San Francisco not San Jose. I'll try to take pictures. I've already been there once, so it's not too exciting for me, but I'm sure you guys would love to see them. Both of you.

OH! Naruto episode 206 came out!!! YAY! There wasn't an episode last week, so I needed my fix. Unfortunately, I missed Battlestar Galactica yesterday, so I have to get the torrent for that too!

Note to self, buy a nail cutter... yikes.

The heat is on...

I've been getting real work to do now. Not that I've been asked to bring coffee or something. Just more or less I'm starting to work on stuff that's kinda cool. Can't say much, other than I hope I can figure out what the hell it is I'm supposed to be able to do. Definitely and idea for a strip (comic that is... not clothing).

Speaking of! I bought a new Wacom Graphire 6" x 8" tablet today. I'll be posting my sketches in a public gallery called MySketches. Today I drew a bird of prey. Really I just started of doodling to get used to the interface. It's kinda strange cause where you touch the pen on the tablet is an absolute position with respect to the screen, unlike the relative motion of a mouse. Given that my laptop screen is a widescreen, I can't get completely accurate with this thing. Takes some getting used to. That's ok, cause I plan to keep any cartoon I draw right now in a sketchy form.

I like the "texture" of the sketchy look. It has that kind of authenticity to it, with a rustic edge. Something not quite refined, but still beautiful if done right. Today's raptor is case in point. The generally wavy parts to the right of the face, which could be interpreted as a kind of "mane", was random crap that I started off with. I've done this before. In fact, here's a picture from more than two years ago! The pheonix and dark dragon's both started off as random squiggles to get creative. Then they just formed into some pretty sketches.

Christchurch, New Zealand

In case you were wondering how individuals get to the U.S. McMurdo Base in Antarctica, they fly out from Christchurch, New Zeland.

Addiction

I think I've found my new addiction. Previously it was Gridwars 2, which is just a clone of Geometry Wars. But this new game is just insane!!!!

On a side note, I've noticed that my body is still on Chicago time. Back home, I would wake up around 8:30 am, but now I wake up at 6:30. Ok... roomies put a movie on the projector. Time to go!

Ajax in Antarctica

Ajax... not the cleaning stuff, but the tech. I saw that Google's up and created an online Doc and Spreadsheet page. What's the need of having a machine with Office anymore? Oh yeah, it sucks if you're at your parent's home with no internet. For instance if you were sleeping in a trench in the Antarctic, like my friend Josh. Anyone who's reading this should definitely visit Josh's blog about his current exploits in Antarctica. I'll post a permanent link on the side soon.

So I've decided that my next restaurant to hit is Sue's Indian Cuisine. The decision was basically cause I have a cousin who's nickname is Sue, so there.

Pigs

The police actually exist. I wanted to take a picture, but it wouldn't have been a safe idea.

So again, I live in a house. Here's some pictures including my room, the kitchen, our living room and the SWEET projector setup. Yes. This is the life.

My roommates are gamers so I got lucky. I pretty much don't know these guys and just decided to take my chances. I had a friend who did the same in the past and ended up with some strange guys who smoked pot and had lots of random sex. I guess I think that's strange, but really it isn't I suppose. So back to gaming. Ohkami is beautiful and looks pretty fun to play. A lot like Zelda games. I'm waiting for their Final Fantasy XII pre-order to come in. I don't think I'll play a "serious" Final Fantasy game for a whlie after that one. Especially since I don't want to spend the money on a PS3.

Speaking of money, I'm gonna get paid in 1.5 weeks! Can't wait. Plenty of debt to pay off. Like my car rental (picture to come soon).

I've got some ideas for cartoons. I started this idea of a hallway ninja back home. Mostly random sketches to try and get a feel for the character. I think I have some cool ideas and will probably start sketching by the weekend in my little sketchbook.

Day 4.. Well Day 1 of Work

Started work today. Had to go in at 8:30 am for orientation. To summarize, it was "here's some info about the company, benefits, here's the IT system, and now here's your cubicle." WHIP-SNAP! Started doing some studying and the cafeteria isn't all that bad, so there's some good perks.

One thing I noticed while on the way to work, and actually for the past several days, is that there are NO COPS on the road! It doesn't make any sense. I mean, people aren't always that good, are they? I accidentally ran a red left-turn light yesterday, and I was hoping there were no cops around. Unless they have a way to track every damn car, in which case I might get screwed with a ticket in the mail, people are free to go butt-crazy!

I must admit there are some cool cars on the road. Saw a couple nice looking VW Beetles, the classic old ones. One of them was even painted to look like Herby the Love Bug. And the other was black, but had some racing wheels one it, at least the kind you can put on a car like that.

Downloaded Inkscape for my Mac today. I'm gonna give it a shot, but after I buy a cheap tablet first. I need to setup a desk in my room. Once I do that I'll buy the tablet. Fortunately we already have a spare desk lying around the house. Yes, house. I live in a house, for those of you who didn't know. :) So hopefully in a couple weeks it'll happen.

Update: Day 3

So I stepped out of the house. I left my parents my two year old Canon Powershot SD110 Digital Elph Digital Camera (I thought some people might have wanted to know the full model name) so I could force myself to buy a newer camera. After stopping by a Best Buy that I ran into while driving around (not literally), I went and bought a Canon Powershot SD600 Digital Elph Digital Camera. I wish I could take a picture of the camera with the camera, now that would be something.

So going back to restaurants, I went to one in Sunnyvale called Saravana Bhavan, South Indian Vegetarian Cuisine. It was nice, but I would say that the chutneys (I think thats how it's spelled) could have been spicier. Especially the mint one.

If you click on the link above, you would be off to one of my public albums at Google's Picasaweb. Wonderful tool, and it works great with iPhoto on my Mac! I just import the images onto my laptop, and using an iPhoto plugin, I can easily create a new album and upload the images I want. It's perfect.

Along the lines of images being uploaded, I have decided to become a little more ambitious and start posting up cartoons I draw. I drew a couple already, but I just need a scanner. I wish I was able to get Photoshop installed on my laptop because I'm also tempted to buy a Wacom tablet. Need a real job first. Paper, pencils, pens and a scanner will have to do for now.

Posting via Mail.app

I'm trying to see if I can post using my mail application on my mac.
Let's see if this works.

Huh... so it did work, but it stayed as a draft. I still had to come in here to publish it. Kinda defeats some of the purpose.

Day 3...all alone

So I'm finally gonna start posting about my experiences out here. I'm sure not many people really care, but ah well. I'll setup a photo album soon. Speaking of, I need to buy a new camera. Look's like I'll hit Fry's or Best Buy around here. I bought stuff for my room too, which was empty.

I'm all alone right now. Both of my roommates had to go to parties involving family, etc. I found out one of my roommates, who I will refer to as R.S. has a birthday next week, and my birthday is on Saturday. I wonder if anyone will remember? So hopefully we can get a party going next weekend, but I have my doubts. Aim low and you'll be happy with whatever is the stance I'm going to take on that one.

There's supposedly some good Indian restaurants here. I'll try hitting them once a week or so and put up my impressions.