Jaco’s Random Writings

Grrr, I knew this was going to happen some time. I just didn’t think it was going to happen so soon. Yes, I got Artist’s Block. After getting back from work, I sat at my screen trying to think of something to draw. And for a good hour, I was just pulling a blank. Well, I have a secret weapon for that. Let me introduce Alchemy. It’s a gesture drawing software that being developed to help spur inspiration. I’m still getting the hang of it, but I’m starting to really like it.

So here’s what I created in Alchemy.

Amidst the chaos, a form appears.

So I started adding form to the chaos. Once I see something, I just throw it into Alias Sketchbook Pro. Here’s what I got out of that:

It appears to be a priestess.

I see a priestess. I’m thinking she’s a priestess of Athena. So here’s the rough sketch I got out of that:

A priestess with a lightning staff

A priestess calling lightning through her staff. I’m sure I probably could have gleaned more from the chaos I created in Alchemy. But hey, I’m just starting to get a hang of this. And as they say, a tool is only as good as the person using it.

Hmm, I need to get an earlier start on these sketches and not get so distracted. I had a hard time staying awake for this. OK, so for tonight’s sketch, I started off with a simple band and slowly built that into a futuristic sky highway.

A few vehicles traveling along a skyway.

I only have 4 vehicles on there, because otherwise I would have been posting this at 4 AM. But what I kind of picture this as being a highway positioned incredibly high in the atmosphere. At least 2 miles off of the ground. This is like Everest high. I imagine you’d see a blanket of clouds below it, with land poking through once in a while. Kind of like when you’re flying international and you look out of the window. I might continue working on this for tomorrow.

Anyway, there is a funny story that will be attached to this (those 37 of you who follow my twitter will recognize this) involving me feeling very exposed in Shoprite. So I figure I’d have time to get my colored laundry done tonight, so I grab a pair of old jeans to wear. I quickly realize why I haven’t worn these jeans in a while; they had shrunk in the wash after I had gotten them. Needless to say, these were some pretty tight jeans.

I decided to drive over to Shoprite to grab some groceries. As I got out of my car, my pants tore open. They tore right along the seam from the bottom of the zipper down the inner-thigh seam 6 inches down the right pant leg. So here I was, standing in the parking lot, cussing to my self and wishing I had some safety pins at hand (note to self: carry safety pins in car). I decided to soldier on and go into Shoprite… careful not to show off the tear. I grabbed a basket and proceeded to fetch my groceries while holding the basket at crotch level the entire time. I was kind of half-walking, half-shuffling through the store, trying not to look awkward… which failed for obvious reasons.

Well, if anyone noticed that I had a massive tear running down the inner thigh of my pants, they sure did a fantastic job of not showing it. I pulled up to the checkout counter, making sure that there is no way the cashier would notice a massive tear running down the inside of my pant leg. After paying, I walked out trying to hide my exposed crotch with the two grocery bags hanging in front of the tear.. at crotch level… yeah the irony isn’t lost on me either. So upon getting into my car, my pants ripped some more. By the time I got out of my car at home, the tear literally ran from the middle of the zipper, down the inner thigh, all the way to the knee. I was mortified the entire time, hoping I wouldn’t get cited for indecent exposure or something of the like. And just when I thought life was starting to get a little mundane…

Oof, I’m kind of pushing it with this update as far as timing goes. Anyways, before I drop the sketch, a little news first (it will explain the lateness).

A while ago, my DVD drive kind of stopped reading disks. It would take it, spin it, and then spit it back out in a rather unceremonious manner. Last week, I finally ordered a new one since I intended to do a little clean-up by re-installing Mac OS X. I also ordered a 250 GB replacement harddrive, seeing as I’m going to have my laptop open, I might as well replace that as well (80 GB isn’t what it used to be). So I pulled out the instructions, opened the case, and replaced everything without incident. It all worked. So I installed Mac OS X on the new drive, migrated the data from my external, and started installing all the apps I usually use. Well, as the day dragged on, it seemed like all good news… until the system froze on me. Not once, but repeatedly. At first I thought I broke something during the installation of the DVD drive and the harddrive. But I had a nagging suspicion that it was the RAM. I pulled out my second stick of RAM and left one in the bottom slot. Lo and behold, when I turned on the system, the screen stayed black, the indicator LED blinked three times, and the system beeped angrily at me before returning to its slumber. I switched the RAM to the top slot, and restarted the system. No problems. In fact, I continued to install more programs (OpenOffice.org this time). Well, I shut down the computer again and tried running the RAM from the bottom slot again. It started up with no problems. It continued running for about 2 or 3 minutes. Then it froze again. At this point, I’m cursing under my breath and thinking of creative ways of beating the person who designed this board. Why am I so angry at the designer of the Powerbook G4 boards? Well, this isn’t the first time the bottom RAM slot died on me. In fact, it happened within a year of me buying this laptop. I had to get the whole logic board replaced. Thankfully, that was under warrantee then. However, it’s been well over a year since that warrantee expired. So that is how my lappy went from having 2 GB RAM to only having 1 GB RAM again. On the plus side, I now have 3.5 hours of battery life instead of 2.5 hours… For whatever that’s worth…

Anyway, that’s probably why tonight’s sketch turned out to be rather dark and disturbing. Would look cool as a tattoo… on someone rocking out at Ozzfest or someplace like that.

A nasty little skullbug.

It started off as just a skull, but then I thought that it would look really cool if it had these thorn-like teeth and a long prehensile tongue coming out. Then I added some really slimy-looking drool on the tongue. I was king of torn between making it an insect or an octopus-type thing with tentacles. I went with the insect legs. I think it was the right choice.

I’m busy putting aside $200 a month for a new computer. If I’m going to build a $1500 computer, I’ll have enough money by… oh, I’d say April. Well, let’s hope my lappy lasts until April. I will be all sorts of pissed off if it crapped out on me before then. I’ll try and have a happier sketch up tomorrow night.

So I have let myself fall behind in the blogenning. And by “behind”, I mean way behind. I’m sitting on 10 posts and the current number is 28. Well, I have a way to remedy it. Since I have taken up the goal of improving my drawing through repeated practice, I am declaring an update blitz, or more specifically, a sketch blitz. Starting with this post, I am posting one sketch every night until I am caught up.

So to start things off, here is a monstrosity from the dark corners of my imagination (trust me, you’ll see a lot of these).

This is some sort of hydra creature.

I just doodled this using my Wacom and Alias Sketchbook. I will be dishing out more of these. Anyway, look forward to my next sketch tomorrow night.

So I had an eventful weekend. I had driven down to Delaware to meet up with Ian and Brandon. We spent the day on Saturday hanging out and chilling, and spent the Sunday down at Kings Dominion down in Virginia. Kings Dominion was fun. We opened the day with bumper cars and then moseyed on over to the water park.

After harassing each other on the lazy river, we took to the slides. Not that eventful, fun, but for the most part what you would explain from slides. Wave pool was fun; did our best impression of zombies in a wave pool. Pity the Big Wave pool was closed… since I was really in the mood for some body surfing. So we figured, “Hey, let’s take the group inner tube.” Sounds safe, right. Except the weight limit is 1000 lbs. We were fine. Between Ian, Crista (Ian’s significant other), Brandon, and I, we totaled ~800 lbs. Now, while Crista is a featherweight, Ian and I are pretty hefty and Brandon is definitely not what you would consider “slight of build”. We got on that inner tube a little worried*. It started out fine. But after we cleared the first bend, things went from thrilling to “Holy crap I just lost 10 years off of my life”. At every turn, Brandon ended at the top of the turn for some odd reason, and I was sitting across from him. But because we’re somewhat heavier than most others, we nearly flipped over on each and every turn. In fact, we were informed by a witness that we actually left the slide on those bends. I’ll believe it. I was staring up at Brandon. A little more and we would have flipped over with him coming down on me. Needless to say, Brandon and I came off of that white in the face. After a ride through the coils of the Power Plunge, we were done with that and off to the rides.

We dried up and had lunch at the Alpine Deli, which was actually fairly decently priced (pretty much what you would pay at Applebee’s or some other place like that) taking in consideration that this is in fact an amusement park. From there, we went to the Scuby Doo Haunted House… because it’s Scooby Doo and we were in a mood to be amused. I took up 2 seats because somewhere in the distant branches of my family tree resides a giraffe (this will actually be a detriment, but more on that later). It meant that I also got 2 laser guns. Awesome. Went through shooting different targets with two guns. More Awesome. I enjoyed that.

From there we went to Volcano. Keep in mind that I have never been on an inverted coaster before**. So I thought, “Hey, I might actually fit on this ride.” I was right. I am now very much in love with inverted coasters. They accommodate tall people. So just to give people an idea of what the coaster looks like:

This is the coaster. You come shooting out of the top of the volcano after doing 0-80 in 2 seconds.

Now, this isn’t one of those traditional coasters that slowly drag you up a hill and then goes “Whoop! It’s in your hands now, gravity!” No. It uses a Linear Induction Motor to shoot you forward, around a curve, into another Linear Induction motor and then vertically out of the volcano. By the way, you come out of that volcano upside down. Just thought you would want to know that.

And now you're upside down.

Once clear of the volcano, the track twists, momentarily flipping the train upside-down. Fortunately, it’s swift enough that you won’t have blood rushing to your head. But that’s not the only twist in the track. You have one here:

And you're about to be upside down again

And here:

That was the last time you get flipped upside down.

The ride is over pretty quickly. After that last twist, you go around the bend and down an incline. Brakes go up and you are finished. I like that ride. I rode it twice. I’m definitely going to ride it again.

Unfortunately, that was the only ride I fit on… I didn’t fit on the Flight of Fear, The Backlot Stunt Coaster, or the Anaconda. Yeah, being 6’5″ with long legs means that most other coasters… not a good fit. And after the excruciating pain I went through squeezing myself into the Sooper Dooper Looper at Hershey, I wasn’t going to subject myself to that again. So when it became clear that I was not fitting into the cars on Anaconda, I thought, “Screw this, I’m getting myself some ice-cream.” My heart was broken and it needed consoling.

So after Ian and his dad hit the Dominator***, we decided to finish the night with the bumper cars, which was a pretty good choice. Years of MarioKart finally paid off. I looked up at the moon and snapped this with my cell phone.

Yeah, this is very interesting and all... but not what I saw.

OK, cellphone cameras, like digital video cameras, don’t have a very high contrast ratio, which means that much of the pretty that I saw didn’t appear. But with the magic of software retouching, you get this:

Throw in some curve editing and creative masking.

There, that’s a bit closer to what I saw when I looked up. The moral of this is: It’s not what the camera picks up that’s important, but how we remember it.

Footnotes

* Pretty much every inner-tube slide I have ever been on has resulted in me nearly flipping over at the bends. I had actually been airborne. Must be my odd body proportions and weird distribution of weight… I’m not very fond of inner-tube rides…
** I had a chance with Great Bear at Hershey, but there was a 2 hour wait for that… and I wasn’t in the mood for that. I was already in too much pain from Sooper Dooper Looper. And not because it was scary or anything. It wasn’t. Just cramped. So very cramped… My hip joints still ache at the memory of that ride.
*** I actually would have fit on the Dominator. It’s a floor-less design, which means it’s pretty an inverted coaster that’s been made to be not inverted. But after that near-death experience at the Zoom Flume, I decided that I was really not in the mood for steep drops.