Black Dog Blog

Archive for September, 2008

Plant Finder

I'm sure this'll be useful for all sorts, even my own writing. For example, I have a country that names its months after the flowers that open in them (e.g. Fritillaire, Dogwood, Mallow or what-have-you (Suitov was born on the 16th Fritillaire, which is named after the snake's head fritillary)).

Oh, and needless to say, flowering times are going to be UK-centric.

Oddly tempted to plant up some snake's head fritillary with their suggested white fritillary and blue cornflower, because that would look ace. Ah, wait, I forgot, I don't like flowers and flowers commit suicide to get away from me. I'll not bother, then. ;)

And this is awesome! 3D scrollable/rotatable video of sharks.

A site called NowPublic.com asked permission to use one of my Flickr photos in one of their stories.

I granted it, of course; my photos are almost all licensed as CC-BY anyway, so as long as you credit you don't need permission (though of course it's nice to know when your stuff's being used).

Neat. Shame it's one of the least good pictures on my photostream, only uploaded at all because hey, giant chocolate bars, funny.

DragonForce concert was great. My feet hurt from all the bouncing up and down. Afterwards we were thirsty and found a shop that has not only lychee Rubicon (a range of exotic-fruit carbonated drinks, generally sold in Asian shops) (I'm British, so Asian = South Asian) but also cartons of lychee juice! It is my new favourite shop evar—and very close to my work.

So far I've been very lazy this weekend and am thoroughly enjoying the break from arts and other stuff.

After posting this I'll go to make smoothies (i.e. shove lots of marked-down fruit in a blender. YUM!) with the bros and play more Resident Evil 4.

I was complimented by so many people on Friday… lots of them liked my tie. I have eccentric rules, such as "if I wear the black shirt on a Friday I wear a tie with it" (my office's dress code is jeans and t-shirts, as a rule; I overdress because the novelty of fitting into reasonably-priced shirts is still a new one on me). Apparently the shiny light grey/silver tie is popular. My favourite is a shiny dark slightly-blueish-grey.

If it wasn't so very clichéd I'd go and paint myself as a metallic dark-grey-blue dragon* now for the lulz. Or a large shaggy grey dog. Or one turning into the other. Sexxxay!

Also complimented on my work, which was even better. I win at graphic design, proofreading and site-building and two people have asked why I'm not a CSD yet.

* Classic Western, four solid legs, canine teeth, four fingers and opposable thumbs, all claws but dews semi-retractable, hard scales, ridges and fins, no spikes, good solid tail rather than snake-whippy, no tail blade and good solid wings rather than tiny hangbutt membranes. Energising/inspirational breath gift, blue flame breath weapon. Probably shown hunting wild lychees, pwning cats and followed by cute animals.** Now you can all pretend I drew this already and save me the trouble. The dog is pretty much an Irish Wolfhound.

** edit: in dragon-geek-ese, since Vespy asks: DC2.Dw Gn L W T+ Phfwlt C"Dark metallic grey-blue" Sks B"Blue flame; breath gift: energise/inspire" A- Nu M—! O/ H+ $ F+f/v R—! J+++ I+ V—! Q- Tc++ E—!# but my description above's more accurate.

I did tweak the picture. It's more thoroughly shaded now. I really am rubbish at shading. :D I fixed everything except one detail that I couldn't face (it was laaate… well, early, and it would've involved fudging some fabric folds, and just no. I draw cute quadrupedal animals for a reason, dammit, and that reason is the evil that is textiles).

Salk really liked it, I think. But I really really have to get faster at this. I'm learning stuff each time, but I wish I could dash stuff off in an hour or two.

I have lyrics to finish for something else, and I've completely neglected my poetry (I was going to write one a week; it's September and I think I've written about 15 altogether this year). But it's all Something Creative, so all interchangeable… Except for prose writing, which I take seriously.

DragonForce tonight! I came into work in The Coat for the occasion. I like my The Coat. I wear the black walking boots and fingerless gloves every day anyway, but today it was the leather pair; biker rather than hobo.

It seems like I haven't got to do the news for weeks. Here's a round-up (oh snap) of some dog (and other) stories from the last fortnight or so.

Sheepdogs flock to world finals

Apologies for the stupid patronising presenter in the clip. I do dislike it when presenters go "oh I know – instead of showing experts do this beautifully, I'll show myself doing it ineptly!"

Interesting here: pet disputes in divorces. (Ignore the random picture of celebrity with mutant dog. I think they just stick those in there to appeal to Nuts readers or something.)

'Miracle' puppy swallowed sucker arrow

Mystery husky found far from home

Swords turn buttheads into murderous buttheads. A "personality disorder that could not be treated"? Stop fannying around and section him.

Since the RSPCA withdrew from Crufts, the Kennel Club has complained to the BBC about the documentary that brought all this to public attention. I thought it was an excellent programme (see the clip in that article) so will be interested to see what happens.

Manners class for dogs and owners

Celebrities: "Plz to be not running over dogs with bikes." Thanks, celebrities!

Ruling allows guide dog in mosque

To prove I'm not above laughing at people in ridiculous outfits, here are the archbishops of Canterbury and York. Rowan is all "hah, I'z the alpha! You's the omega, bezotch!"

And a colleague just sent me this.

I would have named it Tailgate. As in the Tailgate scandal. Yes, I went there and there's nothing you can do about it.

Whoo boy. Finished, sort of! (800×600, 200KB)

This is another one for the Jack forum art exchange. Kristof and Than (panther and raccoon, respectively) belong to their creator, Salkafar. I'd link to his gallery… except it's NSFW.

[There are a couple of places is now a list of 14 15 things I might fix.] (I did.) For now, I'm tired and need to set off for work.

Hey, any film fans, please will you tell me if the background is recognisable?

This may be one for Anke: Snowl for Firefox, a messaging thingy.

Did more on the most urgent piece of artwork last night. Today have been wrestling with my PC at work. It was rebuilt overnight and a lot of settings went kablooie after they had to wipe my profile. I hope to have Outlook restored to its tricked-out glory eventually, and luckily—no, consciously and foresightedly!—I had a day-old backup of my Firefox profile.

Even Firefox knows me as Herms. By the way, if you ever need to mess with Firefox profiles in Windows, get the Run dialogue box up (window key + R, or choose Run from start menu if you're a mouser) and type "firefox -P" to get the profile selection screen.

edit: THIS IS COOL! Warioland in-game footage.

Art and personality test. Fun! Even if you hate art, which I sort of consider myself to.

Of the styles of art we picked for the experiment, your answers suggest you like Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints.

(Not really. It's more that I either hated or was unimpressed by more or less everything in there.)

In the personality profile you had a high intellectualism score, which suggests you like to think about abstract ideas and have a creative imagination.

People who are the same age and sex as you are most likely to prefer Impressionism
People who also score highly in your dominant personality trait are most likely to prefer Impressionism

[Personality results:]
Average extraversion [WHAT]
Average agreeableness [WHAT]
Average conscientiousness
Average emotional stability
High intellectualism
Average emotional intelligence [WHAT!]

I was disappointed that it separated the questions into "do you like this" and "how talented do you think the artist is", for some of which I gave widely different answers (I loved the black squares, but any fool, dingbat or child process can draw black squares), but then seemed to lump the answers back together agan.

So, how do you judge art? My criteria are pretty unsophisticated. I thought about what I was thinking about while rating those, and here's a rough schema, roughly weighted.

Overall: is it colours I like? (or if black and white, is there plenty of grey OR are the lines at least very clean?) Is it shapes I like? Can I tell what it is at a glance? (important) (if it's abstract, that's a "no") Is it NOT very busy? (important)
Subject: is it a painting of something? (important) Is something happening in the painting? Is there a prominent animal? (very important)
Style: is it in a realistic style? (important)

Generally, only if the answer to most of the above is "yes" will I give it more than a brief glance. But prominent animal auto-wins at least a slightly longer look.

I can count the pictures I actually liked on one hand: the tree-shade with the glasses, the winter mountains with dogs, the volcano and two sets of abstract black squares. And the cubist calf, but only because it's an animal and the artist seemed to get animals.

There's also a synaesthesia test, and lots more, but the synaesthesia one is useless because it doesn't differentiate finely enough. I don't colour letters or numbers, but do colour the odd-numbered weekdays moderately strongly and very consistently…

Finland school shooting.

In better news, beautiful clock (I hear Lord Vetinari has already placed an order)

Extinct tortoise species to be recreated by selective breeding

And random stuff…

First Android handset being launched

Men with sexist views 'earn more'

Gene therapy shown to help congenital eye disorder

Archaeologists find that Stonehenge was a trendy spa and suffered from vandals, hope to unearth prehistoric ASBO carved in limestone.

"HOT" IS NOT A VERB.
"HOT" IS NOT A VERB.
"HOT" IS NOT A VERB.

*weeps*

I think I just got my first request/freebie commission/whatever. How odd. If you see someone looking dazed—well, I always look dazed, so it'll be me, and if I'm looking even more dazed than usual, that means it's probably now.

Bad news is, it's human and requires historical research (what's an Agincourt?) and I probably can't sneak a cute animal in there. Good news is, at least it's a bloke, and a 40–50-year-old at that, so there's no yucky Callow Youthery to be had. And bearded, which means I can fudge the chin!

That'll teach me to email round an extra-cute red panda, now, won't it?

Art stuff on the go, in order of priority:

1. 1 for Salkafar (time-dependant)
2. 1 sketchie/freebie for Salkafar (not urgent but quick)
3. Finish dental fuzzboks for Stranger
4. Misty for Paul
5. Bloke for CoworkerD

Don't worry, though: my art phase will probably be over soon. Then, if past performance is to be relied upon, I won't spam pictures and stuff at you for at least a year or so.

I was going to work on some artwork. Instead, I did some other artwork. Procrastination FTW!

WARNING: contains gratuitous CUTE (400×600px, 86kb)

Anke's fault.

And I know the shading and so on is rushed, because I wanted something I could do at a sitting. To begin with I wasn't planning to shade it at all, so anything more is a bonus. :P I used SO many reference pictures here, including for the outfit and character reference sheets from Anke's gallery. (The other figure in the picture is her Sylvie.)

I must stop drawing girls holding cute animals before I get typecast. (Tabletcast?)

Scallies and chavs in oil paint, in the style of Old Masters. Vespers and a few other arty people on my friendslist should enjoy this.

Concilium Plebis

edit: This is for Charlycrash!

Oh my! A photograph of mine has been featured on a Schmap.com map of Manchester. See, that? That's because I give them away for free. Creative Commons licences are ace.

It's the Library Theatre (with the tram in front). (original pic)

It was very nice of them to let me know, too. I appreciated it. Go and see their map!

Radio interview went well

Registered domains this morning

For now (cheapest-ass new website ever): http://pyroclasm.hellhound.net/ is the home of Pyroclasm. Small page so no Slashdotting, with any luck.

Recorded interview, will listen and edit later…

edit: MySpace too. I chose the url; /pyroclasm and /pyroclastic were both already taken, so rather than /pyroclasmuk (muk! muk! glorious muk!) I went for /pyroclasmic (which still sounds slightly grubby if you have a dirty mind, thus is perfect). Pyroclasm of course immediately friended Alestorm.

Tomorrow is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I woke up to Rock Radio on my alarm clock as I usually do and noted that they were doing a pirate-themed breakfast show tomorrow.

Slen's band Pyroclasm (consisting of Slen and his mate John—name contributed by the illustrious Charlie Monterey!) has done a song about a pirate. I woke Slen up in great excitement and told him to call them up and try to get it played.

He has. They will.

So… tomorrow morning the breakfast show (06:00–09:00 UK time) is playing his song and interviewing him! Eeee! My baby brother on a good regional radio station! Talking about pirates! Everyone tune in (you can listen live on the Rock Radio site) and record it if you can!

OMFGSQUEE.

I've finally been identified as the culprit who left the paper dinosaur.

Direct questions—my one weakness!

I wasn't averse to being found out, mind you. To cause a little curiosity and confusion was my aim, and evidently I've done that. It's been, what, 14 days or so since she found it…

As I wandered back downstairs I heard the recipient saying "I've found out who left the dinosaur!"