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Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
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| Thursday, December 17th, 2009 |
eyeteeth
|
2:32a |
What do I pay you people for?
 This is one of my favorite scenes in Dracula, when the vampire girlfriends are kind of about to gang-rape Jonathan and he's kind of into it, only then the Count storms in and grabs the lead girlfriend by the neck and throws her across the room because for Pete's sake, do you think it was easy to get an English real estate agent all the way out here in the middle of the Carpathians? I had to go get him from the train station and I have to keep feeding him, because these guys eat food, you know, I can't just grab a villager and stuff him in a sack and bring him home like I do for you three, and do you think I enjoy catering to the fleshly whims of a big dumb mortal? I, a Székely, a descendant of Attila the Hun, do you think I like roasting chickens and brewing coffee like some damn servant? And then you people go and try to eat him before I've even bought the house! YOU CAN EAT HIM WHEN I'M DONE! I love the notion of Dracula, incarnation of fleshly lust, stuck in this position where he has to keep managing the physical needs of others. He has to feed Jonathan; he has to feed his girlfriends; he has to keep the girlfriends from "kissing" Jonathan; he has to have lengthy discussions with Jonathan in order to keep him up until dawn so he sleeps really late and doesn't find it strange that the Count sleeps really late too. And when Jonathan cuts himself shaving Dracula has to keep calm about it, all that wonderful blood, five whole quarts of delicious English blood, no, restrain yourself! All this delayed gratification is such a pain. Vampires aren't good at it. I had a whole thing I was going to tell you about Dracula's girlfriends (a blonde and two brunettes) and their intriguingly ambiguous relationship with him, but that will have to wait, I have too much work to do. |
airlied
|
3:20p |
radeontool 1.6.0 released
I've just done a 1.6.0 release of radeontool from my personal repo, it contains both radeontool and avivotool, and is probably full of ugly but whats in distros now is older and worse. radeontool (and avivotool) are lowlevel tools to tweak register and dump state on radeon GPUs, they also can parse parts of the BIOS data tables. Tarballs are at http://people.freedesktop.org/~airlied/radeontool/git://people.freedesktop.org/~airlied/ra deontool.git |
| Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 |
beatonna
|
8:50p |
Familiar Faces
 Some holiday comics! The Kiss Elves return. Oh and I am posting journal type comics on twitter sometimes. If you are on twitter I am @beatonna |
| Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 |
rstevens
|
10:31p |
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erikamoen
|
3:14p |
The End of DAR!
I know, I know, this isn't new news, but here is my official announcement:  After six years, December 28th will be the final DAR! strip! Yay! I'm so, so grateful for all the wonderfully positive things that have come into my life as a direct result of this comic and I am even more excited to focus my energy on my completely new projects. It's all in the above link, but I just wanted to say 'thank you' again. Thank you to everyone who has been reading my dumb little journal comic for the last six years. Thank you for buying my books. Thank you for writing me kind letters. Thank you for supporting me. I'm so happy to have had an audience to share my life with and I hope people will be just as excited as I am when my new projects launch. So thank you again and yay! Man, I am fucking stoked :D |
erikamoen
|
12:19p |
|
zubkavich
|
8:02a |
Legends of Zork - 8 Months Later
I've got to say, I'm impressed with the evolution of Legends of Zork. When the game first launched a bunch of people seemed miffed at the lack of, well, Zork-ness in the whole thing. I received a lot of compliments on the art but quite a few people I talked to mentioned they were disappointed that the gameplay didn't feel like the Zork they knew and loved. It didn't have whimsical descriptions or puzzles, just a grind-centric battle interface with loot, moving from place to place and bashing things. 8 months later and it's now quite robust with actual story quests and puzzles, silly descriptions, a vastly improved interface and a much better sense of progression and things to do. Looking at the rankings, there are now over 117,000 characters created and a variety of groups and guilds playing together in 9 different languages. It's still a casual focused browser game but there's now a much greater sense of strategy and storytelling involved. The crew and I have done 4 art updates (with the latest artwork just finished last week, so hopefully that will work its way into the active game very soon) and Jolt/Activision seem really happy with its growth and progress. As soon as that new art is live I'll start posting pieces up. If you haven't seen the previous Zork designs I contributed to the project, you can check them out right HERE. |
| Monday, December 14th, 2009 |
hepkitten
|
10:41p |
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erikamoen
|
12:14p |
<:D
 Bigger Readable SizeOh my fucking god, my heart is completely bursting. This is a comic I received from Sam and Joe this morning (regarding this week's comic) and I think it's safe to say it's made my whole year. They don't have a website I can direct you guys towards, but obviously they are exploding with talent and I can't wait to see what else they come up with! <3 <3 <3 |
eyeteeth
|
1:37a |
Return of the Outsider Jew
 This woman who finds my Judaism lacking isn't anyone in particular. I just think of her as one of the many Orthodox women in my neighborhood. Her name is probably Esther or something like that. Man, aren't you glad I figured out how to bump up the contrast on these things? The old ones look like ass to me now. |
| Sunday, December 13th, 2009 |
hepkitten
|
7:14p |
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beatonna
|
10:50p |
that's a good one old buddy
 I saw a stage production of A Christmas Carol today. I love Dickens, I will always love A Christmas Carol. Even if they don't do smoking tricks in it. |
| Friday, December 11th, 2009 |
erikamoen
|
4:48p |
Underground Issue 2
One of the super fun parts about being a member of Periscope Studio is that you get to pose for reference photos. This is a reference picture I modeled in for Steve as he was laying out Underground issue two's cover. You guys? Underground is really, really good. I'm not just saying that because I've posed for it a bunch! It's so well written by Jeff Parker and the art is, of course, spectacular from Steve. It's just a goddamn good package. It's the best spelunking thriller you will ever read, I assure you. It's also a pretty complete cast of Periscope hidden behind the characters' poses ;) Anyway, just wanted to show you guys this side-by-side! (If you want to buy this particular issue, you can head on over to Things From Another World ;) |
|
jeffr_tech
|
12:37p |
What's in a journal anyway?
In this post I'll detail the contents of the journal and the recovery operation. Since we know that softupdates only leaves two inconsistencies, leaked inodes and leaked blocks, we only have to journal conditions which can create these circumstances. In truth we have to track all link count changes to an inode since they can have multiple named references via hardlinks. Blocks are somewhat simpler although ffs fragments complicate them considerably. At recovery time we verify whether links or pointers to blocks exist and use this information to free them if necessary. There are only 4 journal records (add ref, rem ref, new block, free block) and each is only 32bytes. This is effectively an intent log, there is no copy of the metadata in each record. Sounds simple no? ( Read more... ) |
compilerbitch
|
2:16p |
That questions meme thingo...
So, if you want questions, reply with one, two, many, lots, loads, buckets, Standard Poodles or whatever units you prefer and I shall oblige in return. You should offer to do likewise, blah blah whatever meme stuff etc. From ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) fluffthebunny:1. Imagine there's nothing but digital media anymore for photographic imaging. Would you miss film, or say good riddance?I'd personally not notice. I've exclusively used digital for some years now, and I don't feel that film offers anything useful that digital does not. Sure, I'm looking at this from the high end, dealing with digital medium- and large-format, but also I don't feel any lack in using a DSLR like one of my Nikons in comparison with 35mm film. 6x6cm medium format film or 4x5" large format film is probably still superior to most DSLRs, but digital medium format beats 4x5 film, and digital 4x5 is frankly staggering. This is just physics. Also, the artistic control afforded by Photoshop, Aperture, Lightroom and the like far exceeds anything possible with silver gelatin processing, even going all the way with very advanced processing techniques like Ansel Adams's Zone System. I know, I've done that stuff, and digital is sharper, more flexible, easier to use and usually way cheaper if you factor in ongoing production costs. So no, film can die in a fire. :-) 2. At this stage of your life, do you think you'd enjoy teaching in higher ed?Teaching, yes, no question. I love teaching. Research, not sure, I am not really turned on by how vicious things get when a people fight bitterly over a small amount of funding. I'm kind of burned out on that -- NASA is basically the same internally in terms of the way that funding works. 3. What were you most proud of, before you came to the USA?Wow, difficult one that. Finally getting my PhD, probably. But there are lots of other candidates. 4. What color is your hair today?Blonde. I look almost respectable. :-) 5. Where's the best korean food in your area... and can we share some when I'm visiting next month?There is a decent place on Castro Street, very close to the Mexican place I think I've taken you to before. I've liked it there the couple of times I've been. We should do that. :-) From tenacious_snail:1. If you could magically relocate something from the UK to California, what would you pick?Kebab vans. All of them. The US lacks kebab vans. And chocolate that doesn't taste like plasticised vomit with brown food colouring. 2. Has anything about dating a man surprised you? What?Being bugged about going Steampunk more than before? ;-) 3. If money were no object, which would you choose as a career: musician, fine art photographer, sound engineer?Of the three, photographer, I think, or maybe the 4th that's not on there, which is for me an extension of photography, which might be film maker. 4. Do you want to be able to have a dog again, or is Hooch Just That Special?I would like a dog again, but only if I could take him or her to work with me. I don't like leaving dogs at home alone for long periods. It possibly also predicates a more settled home life than I currently have. 5. If you could no longer wear black clothes, what would your wardrobe look like?Very, very, very, very dark blue? |
beatonna
|
3:34p |
The Old Fox
 Death of military personnel: my comics specialty. Anyway, I like Montcalm. He wasn't, I don't think, as talented as his young rival James Wolfe, but he was among the best they had and a well experienced, hard working man who did his job as best he could. Montcalm had a hot temper and didn't like Quebec, but he tried to save it, even though he was almost always at heads with Vaudreuil the Canadian born Governor- to whom he was supposed to defer. Vaudreuil was experienced in North America and cared passionately for Quebec, but had never really encountered modern European warfare, and didn't understand it. Montcalm hated the corruption in New France, thought the war was useless, and tried to leave but wasn't allowed. In his final letter to his wife he writes, "I think I should have given up all my honors to be back with you, but the king must be obeyed; the moment when I shall see you again will be the finest of my life. Good-bye my heart, I believe I love you more than ever." I like Montcalm. Wolfe, of course got the most famous painting in this country's history done up for him some years after the Plains of Abraham. Montcalm got one eventually. It's ok. |
| Saturday, December 12th, 2009 |
ryanestrada
|
3:02a |
|
| Thursday, December 10th, 2009 |
erikamoen
|
8:57p |
Sculptings
 http://erikamoen.etsy.comSorry I've fallen way behind on my drawings, I haven't had time to do them for the last while. I've got a bunch of sketches ready to be inked though. Anyway, here's some more stuff: ( A few more )These and more are up over at http://erikamoen.etsy.comLooks like this'll be the last of the potted tentacles for a while, since I've completely run out of my little pots. I've bought out two Michael's stores worth! If any Portlanders see those little four packs of .5" flower pots, gimme a shout. |
zubkavich
|
8:36a |
Ibuki Thoughts - Part One
Thanks to everyone who sent along congrats on the Ibuki mini-series I'm writing for UDON. Although I co-wrote the Exalted mini-series we did back in 2005, this feels like the first real comic writing gig where I'm being paid to write it all on my own and I'm incredibly excitedt. Yes, I've worked for UDON for years but this aspect of it is new for me. Although I've been involved with conceptualizing the Tribute and Art of Capcom art books, I've never really made decisions about our Street Fighter comic line. Ken's been the story guy on Street Fighter since the comic series began back in 2003. I'd look at print proofs to make sure issues were ready to go or approve trade dress, but the content inside has always been someone else's responsibility. When conversations started about what comics we had coming down the pipe (a new Darkstalkers mini-series, the next Street Fighter story arc after the current Street Fighter II Turbo and wrapping up our Street Fighter IV mini-series) we knew that Ken would have 3 comics to take care of, the most he's ever written simultaneously. Omar was wrapping up Street Fighter Legends: Chun-Li and we wanted to make sure we had another book for him to work on. I had the Ibuki story concept buried deep for quite a while and given an opening like this I enthusiastically sprang it on the group then and there. Erik told me to write it up and to see if Capcom Japan would approve it and we were off to the races. Omar Dogan and I have quite a history together. In brief, when we both left Sheridan's Animation program to go work for a start-up animation company in Calgary we quickly became friends and roommates. Omar's dedication and work ethic always impressed (and sometimes intimidated) me and we talked a lot about what kind of creative things we wanted to do down the road. I showed him tons of manga and anime that I was hooked on at that point and his love of that art style, which was already burning bright, was fanned even higher. One of the things we talked about was how great it would be to work on a comic together. Making that a reality 10 years later is an incredibly cool feeling. Getting to phone up artists who have been my heroes for years like Adam Warren and Jo Chen to provide alternate covers for the mini-series has made the experience even sweeter. I've always felt Ibuki was a visually dynamic character who had tons of potential. I was quite serious when I compared her to Spider-Man in terms of her dual life and responsibilities. She's a character readers can empathize with and also feel empowered by, much like Spider-Man. We all feel the weight of expectations upon us and wish we had an aspect that made us special and amazing alongside the day-to-day tasks we have to take care of. Unlike Spidey, Ibuki's family knows her as the superhero, the ninja. They expect nothing less than the best in terms of her martial arts prowess, focus and ability. Her high school life is where she hides those incredible skills and tries to blend in as a normal teenager who has to handle homework, social groups and the awkwardness of falling in love. It's wish fulfilment alongside real aspects about being a teenager mixed in with some manga tropes I love and feel ring true. Isn't this a bit much for a comic based on Street Fighter, a game where two characters punch and kick each other in the face? Not at all. The strength of Capcom's video game character concepts is that they're rarely one-note ideas. They embody larger themes and storytelling aspects side-by-side with great visual design. They can be summed up in one sentence while also having substantial depth to dig into, if you want. Yes, it's a comic book tied to a video game about a character who has approximately 20 lines of canon dialogue up until this point. It's a licensed book for an intellectual property, but so is Spider-Man, Buffy, Batman... all of those characters and related intellectual properties. What counts is the core of the story and what you do with it. |
eyeteeth
|
1:57a |
In which I assign an offensive joke to a dead man who can't sue me for libel
 We haven't seen him in a while, and this particular joke has been in my head for months. (As you can see from the fact that we are on the train, this is supposed to go at the front of the book, near the strip in which we first meet and the Mayflower one.) It is not only in bad taste; it is also colossally obscure, in that "Christmas cards from patients" is a reference to a freakout Freeman had late in his career, during a talk he gave in which he showed off three lobotomized children. The doctors in attendance reacted with hostility. Finally Freeman dumped out a box of about five hundred Christmas cards that he had brought with him, challenging the other doctors: "How many of you get Christmas cards from your patients?" We know about this incident from two participants: Walter's son Paul, who was one of the doctors in the audience, and Howard Dully, who was one of the lobotomized kids. I may have to rewrite this comic to give myself the bad joke, because I may decide it's unfair to assign dialogue like this to a dead man I've never met. The dead man in question, though, drove around in a vehicle called the Lobotomobile, and took pride in the number of people who fainted or vomited during his demonstrations, and made some pretty cruel jokes at patients' expense for the sake of getting a laugh out of his medical students. For me the least believable thing about this comic is that Walter would have known the name of the Jewish holiday that falls closest to Christmas. He died in the seventies, after all, before we as a nation decided to pretend that Chanukkah is a big deal. Fun fact: Walter said that lobotomy worked better on Jews than on the general population, and guessed that this was because the tight-knit Jewish family provided a better postoperative environment. Another fun fact: I just learned from my father that he had a crazy uncle who was institutionalized in the fifties. An institution in the fifties, huh? "You know, Freeman said lobotomy worked better on Jews," I said. "Well, did he ever get out to Kentucky?" asked my father. I wonder that myself... |
| Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 |
caladri
|
10:52p |
I'm a data point!
I admit it, I never really watched Blade Runner before the Final Cut. I say this because there is apparently some group of people on the Internet who say that while people who saw and enjoyed the Theatrical Cut may wax rhapsodic about the purity of the Final Cut (or even the Director's Cut), it isn't a good movie on its own and is just impenetrable. I disagree. The Final Cut drops you into a universe and sells it very, very well. I actually feel, now finally watching the Theatrical Cut, that the universe is weakened by the voiceover -- to say nothing of the ending of the Theatrical Cut. With the voiceover, you are continually stepping outside of what is actually a very good immersion into the universe of the film. It ends up being very brooding, which is appropriate I think, without Harrison Ford's bad Film Noir voice, but you can infer and understand enough because the film does a good job of showing without telling. I didn't need told that Gaff had been there. It was shown beautifully. I don't care if Gaff is a brown-noser, and the makeup of cityspeak was plenty obvious. The argument that your average audience wouldn't have gotten it without the voiceover and wouldn't have liked it without the happy ending is pretty silly, the average audience didn't like it anyway. Since I figure everyone who cares would've seen the Theatrical Cut (or the Director's Cut, perhaps) first, I think it's probably interesting for me to throw my experience out there. |
eyeteeth
|
7:33p |
September 1, 1939
After what happened to me yesterday with Yeats I tried Auden today and bingo, more tears. This is rather unusual but not unpleasant. I like being reminded of my capacity to feel. I just wonder why I've been having so many feelings recently. This poem got bandied around a lot after 9/11, but it wasn't quite right then. The literal and figurative odor of those particular deaths, far from being unmentionable, was all anyone talked about. I think the poem is more fitting now, at the end of another low dishonest decade. I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night. Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again. Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse: But who can live for long In an euphoric dream; Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism's face And the international wrong. Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good. The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone. From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; 'I will be true to the wife, I'll concentrate more on my work,' And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the dead, Who can speak for the dumb? All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die. Defenseless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame. |
rstevens
|
1:45p |
|
rstevens
|
11:29a |
i'm dreaming of a white powder
I got my wish granted this morning. Just enough snow to trigger my sleep-a-little-longer gland because I finally caught up on work last night. This is from just before the sun came up.  Now to the office cave! Blizzards lead people to do a lot of online t-shirt and sock shopping and I've got a mailman to wrestle. |
beatonna
|
2:12a |
hello again
 You remember my younger self, right? It's been a while. The younger self comics aren't around much because they're so uh, different. They're odd, I write them as I go. I spent two days working on a comic that I ended up not liking. Maybe I will fix it later and post it sometime, it happens! Expect another update soon. But for now, not wanting to wait any more days to update, I just made a comic about frustration. Poor little self, I don't always treat her well! And I felt so bad about the broken telescope, I kept it until I was in university. I still like advent calendars, though. |
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