Saturday, December 17, 2005

Einstein's Brain

Found this while looking for this picture to tease my friend Simple American about. Pretty deep stuff actually and a little disturbing.

In the next 30 years or so I predict that the sanctity of life will be lost. That is to say that a person will be defined legally by their personality not their form. Assisted suicide, cloning, brain transplants, and genetic conditioning... it will all come to be. Eugenics at it's most base. And I know this because humans are depressingly vain beings who as a whole are less than their combined parts.

From Driving Mr. Albert : A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain:
"Even now there are doctors who claim in our lifetimes we will see the first brain transplant or that cloning will become an everyday occurrence. In essence, they predict that science, not religion, will guarantee us an afterlife. And yet I can't help but wonder what Einstein would make of America if he sat in the backseat now -- or, perhaps, what he will make of it when he sits in the backseat again. And I wonder if this kind of afterlife would be so great after all. Einstein's brain in the body of Fabio? Or Einstein regenerated, living a life on top of the life he's already led, doomed by the accomplishments of his former self. A life already confined, categorized, and collated before it's even begun again. What would it feel like to be born with an FBI file already open on you? Or to know you had once revolutionized the world with your work, but then never found true love? Might you try to trade one for the other? Or would you just sit around smoking pot all day, rebelling againt yourself?"

Friday, December 16, 2005

Where am I going... and where the hell have I been?

Wow! I cannot believe I went this long without blogging a post! Yikes. I have been super busy and I have been trying to sort out all sorts of things in my professional and personal life. I'm taking a long hard look at what I want out of life and what I am getting out of it. Life is too damn short to waste it - and I have wasted plenty!

As the end of the year approaches I have a lot of ideas and energy for January. First and foremost is finishing up my 2 RPG projects. That will land me some backend sales on Flatlands and more importantly get my shoddy work back in the public eye ;)
Flatlands is great, but now it's time to build the brand. Which is exactly what I intend to do next year :)

The other big thing I want to do ASAP is get an nice website going. It's just pathetic that my site consists of this blog and a link to my publishers page! I need some proper virtual real estate so I dun look like such a dweeb lol! Not that my publishers have a bad site or that they don't work thier collective a$$ off to promote my stuff. In fact it's the complete opposite (go there now! buy lots of stuff! ;) It's just that I need to be a *little* vain if I'm going to expect anyone to take my work seriously. It's just smart business to have a website (and like I kind of do that for a living soooo... it's pretty dumb for me not to do it for myself!)

Finally I need to start really exploring my art and getting a hell of a lot better at it. I want to grow and learn and start creating really exquisite pieces. I also need to get out more and start spending less time on the computer and more time in the "real" (sic) world.

Monday, October 24, 2005

Missed me by thissss much :P

Well Hurricane Wilma landed well south of us, but she still pounded the heck out of my neighborhood with heavy winds. We live in a mobile (one constructed back in 1959 to boot) so it was a bit harrowing. Fortunately we escaped without damage (again). My new years resolution is to get the heck out of here and into a block home. My in-laws were kind enough to let us use this place to save money, but it's time to move on.

Despite the hurricane I have made some decent progress on my latest project. Not as much as I would have liked, but much more than I expected. All misc images, land vehicles and helicopters are done. Just have airplanes, infantry, and some terrains to do. This project has taught me some valuable lessons about time management and estimating. It has taken more than 3 times longer than expected. Of course this is due largely to my inability to make cuts where needed and to keep piling work onto myself. The current project is at a staggering 198 images with another estimated 140-150 images to complete. Nobody can say I don't provide a good value to my customers!

In related news my external hard drive case arrived. It's not much to look at, but it seems to be working nifty and it puts my backup drive back into commission which is a relief. I am still worried that the drive may have physical problems or sector errors so I need to dig out some diagnostic software (or find some online) and put my mind at piece. Until I do I am not using it as my primary backup. I may grab another case as an early Christmas gift to myself and double up on redundancy which would definitely put my mind at ease (God I'm such a packrat!)

Oh and saw the doctor again. She was quite perturbed that I had not gotten my blood tests done yet. What can I say I've been busy and I hate needles. I do need to get it done though in the next 2 weeks. She upped my prescription to Advair 250mg. I gotta say it's good stuff for people who are suffering from any kind of asthma type malady.

Well that's it for now...
until Halloween! Muwahahaha!!!!

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

The volume in drive H:\ is Dirty...

When it rains, it pours.

I had no sooner lamented about how hard it was to keep up with everything, when my computer's UPS ("uninterruptible" power supply - sic) quit out on me.

Not only did it die, but it died hard. It did so without any warning and completely cut the power to the PC and all the external devices.

I couldn't get it back up so had to scrounge a power strip from some long forgotten dusty corner under a desk in the kids room. When the system came back up I was horrified to find my external USB drive failed. It was making sick grinding noises - never a good sign for electronic equipment.

This to me is bad. Really, really bad. I keep all of my flatlands stuff on there.

Now like a good boy I do keep backups. I have some old CD burns I made a few months ago, but more importantly I have a backup that is more recent on another drive (thank you ThinkSync!), but it still meant several halfway decent days worth of work were gone... flushed out into the ethereal toilet. :(

Talk about feeling like you were kicked while being down. I'm working hard to get ahead and all that work just gets wiped out. uggg. I momentarily contemplated giving up and taking a leave of absence from the computer for a while.

Then I got my senses and second wind back. I Rolled up my sleeves and dived in.

Even after removing every screw I could find, I still had to tear the damn plastic casing apart to get at the drive. Hooked it directly into the PC in true Frankenstein fashion. Crossed my fingers, toes and every other flexible appendage and rebooted the machine.

Uh oh! Blue screen-of-death. This could be bad.

"The volume in drive H:\ is Dirty"

That's a first for me. Never saw that message in 20 some years of tinkering with computers. It looked ominous. I tried to decide if there was pr0n stored on that drive and if so how dirty it was, but before I could come to a conclusion Windows began crunching numbers and doing... well... something. I'm still not sure what it did, but it ground through the drive 1 painful percentage point at a time. 10 minutes later there were no other messages and I could explore the drive.

Needless to say I spent a great deal of time (until 2 AM) getting the most critical bits and pieces forklifted off that drive and tucked in other places. It was a setback, but thank goodness not a horrible one.

Today I have a new UPS (from a DIFFERENT manufacturer) and thanks to eBay a new external case is on it's way so I can try and rebuild my lovely H:\ drive and put here back up on top of the PC where she belongs and not dangling around inside held willy-nilly by cables and power wires. If things go well I may invest in another external shell and put one of these old harddrives I have laying around to good use as well ;)

In the mean time I have got to get my steam back and figure out what karmic deed I need to do to get the scales back in my favor so I can get some work done!

Monday, October 10, 2005

Out to Sea...

Not sure what they call the effect, but I remember reading about how the tide can pull a swimmer out to sea even though they think they are swimming closer to the shore. Each cresting wave actually pulls the person further away as they struggle to swim closer.

That's how my life feels right now. No matter how much I get done I turn around and there's twice as much more to do... at work and at home. It's just not all coming together as I hoped.

In a few days it will be a full month since I started working on my next project which I thought would take two weeks. Right now I'm at maybe 50% even after banging away all weekend. I'll try working hard this week as well and hopefully I can tip the scales in my favor. Two weeks ago I jokingly told Preston on the phone "I should have it done this week, which means more like three weeks". Sadly I couldn't have been closer to the truth. The part that gets under my craw is how I mismanaged my time. I *should* have focused on a nice Halloween themed Flatlands set last month to go with the holiday instead of spinning my wheels. I can picture a sheet of classic horror monsters - ghosts, frankensteins, mummies, werewolves, skeletons... *sigh* Ah well there's always next year. Instead I'm working on tanks and helicopters. Feels a bit unseasonal heh ;)

At this rate I may end up strapping AIM-9D's and afterburners on a certain stealth black painted sleigh cause if I don't get the lead out that's when my project will finally be completed!?!

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Get Stoned!

So this weekend I started back at work on one project and got drafted into another!?! How do these things always happen to me? Oh the humanity :P

She has always been an artist at heart, but a much more hands on artist than I. No digital for her. No sir. She prefers the feel of a brush in her hands over of a mouse. The past few weeks she has been learning how to paint her art onto rock... Mexican black river rock to be exact. She has gotten quite good at it I think and so far it has been some of her best work to date.

What started as a hobby has turned into a small business for her. She has sold 17 rocks with different critters on them. Everything from cats, dogs and racoons to dragons & polar bears. Very cool stuff.

So of course she needs a website... hey listen I need a web site too!?! Ah well. Some how the ladies always win. So I started putting together something for her. It's a work in progress, but at least the main frame is together with a few bells & whistles. The rest should go live over the next few days.

Take a look and tell me what you think. These "Whimstones" as she calls them make great gifts. (hint hint). Oh and if you like them tell a friend for me would ya? We artist live by word of mouth. Thanks :)


Whimstone.com ~ Tell a Friend! ;)

Friday, September 16, 2005

Super Secret Project

Spent too many late hours last night working on a new super secret project. If all goes well I can kill 2 or more birds with about 150 well placed digital stones :O Wait didn't I say I needed to create a website?? Ah well maybe later :P


shhh! It's a see-crete ;)

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Hackin' Up a Lung

I've always had a productive cough. That's a nice way of saying when I cough it sounds like I'm "hawking up a luggie" ewww. I wake up most mornings and sound like a heavy cougher. Nasty stuff. I don't smoke, but I do joke about second hand smoke, because I live with a smoker. Living with someone who smokes in the house is tough for a non-smoker. You never really get used to it.

Anyway I've lived with this problem since I was a kid, but lately I have had some scary bouts of feeling like a heavy weight was on my chest. Whenever I would get like that I could usually use Primatine Mist (over the counter) to clear out my lungs, but this weekend it didn't seem to help much.

Then I read about CF (Cystic Fibrosis) and got scared enough to go see the Doc and ask for some real answers as to why I have this chronic problem. She doesn't feel I'm a candidate for that terrible disease as unfortunately it kills most afflicted with it before they reach their mid-thirties. I also lack a history of it in my family. She took a listen to my chest and told me that I do have some rattling going on in there. She ordered a whole battery of x-rays, blood tests and put me on some antibiotics and a weird disc shaped inhaler called advair. I like her. She gets right down to business ;) Hopefully it's just allergies and a mild case of asthma.

I blame the cat... he's shifty eyed and I think he wants me out of the picture (probably laying on my face at night trying to smother me - lil bastard :P

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

My pixel kingdom for a digital horse!

A fellow publisher tried to email me and he had to dig through about 4 different websites to get ahold of me. Man that is just embarassing. I really need to find time to plop down at least a basic website. As much as I enjoy blogging, it's overdue for Dirty Unicorn Games to have a place to call home. (now if I can just get my head out of the clouds, put my feet on the ground and BUILD it then things will be peachy ;)

In related news I managed to spend a whole lot of time and money to increase my productivity just a little... funny how that works *sigh*

I grabbed some more super useful progs from Stardock. They are a suite of tools collectively called ThinkDesk and if you do a lot of work on the computer you may want to at least give them a glance. ThinkDesk consists of 4 utilites:

Multiplicity - not just a funny Michael Keaton film, but also an interesting program (albiet one I personally may not use very much at home). It allows you to control multiple PC's with one keyboard and mouse. This may sound rather dry and surely there are other programs that do this (remote desktop springs to mind), but this one is cool in that you can apparently run your mouse off of one screen and onto the next. Imagine dragging and dropping files from one PC screen to another. Want your son or daughter to turn off the computer and come to dinner? Grab the mouse and roll over to thier screen and shut it down for them muwahaha. Play multiple characters in an online game by jumping back and forth. Lots of intersting ideas here. It's sort of a super "micro-network" between your computers.

KeepSafe - extremely useful for artists or writers. KeepSafe will make backup copies of file seach time you save them. So say you mess up and delete a chapter of your manuscript you can go back to an older version and retrieve it. It's a nice and simple backup utility that works on individual files, file types or whole folders. Good stuff for lazy people like me that always wait to backup important stuff.

ThinkSync - this program lets you synchronize 2 folders so that they contain the same files. I'm using it for a backup tool that runs every few days. The nice thing here is that it can work like an incremental backup and just save files that have changed. I use this to backup my art folders that I dump most of my work in.

SecureProcess - the last utility may be the best for just about all users. You train SecureProcess over the course of a week (or longer if you like) so that it gets used to what programs you use regularly. After that it becomes kind of an internal firewall as it protects against unrecognized processes from installing or running. This is really sweet because it works at the system level instead of looking for programs that are trying to send or recieve in and out of the computer. Combine this with Startup Monitor, Spyware Guard, and Spyware Blaster and you have a really good chance of keeping that spam and virus crap off of your system!

Sunday, September 11, 2005

T.G.I.S.

Well the week is over and I made it through alive. Wish I could say that I was able to clean out my workload and not have to go back to a mountain on Monday, but C'est la vie.

At least my art batteries are starting to fill up a little. I can always tell when I'm getting "too" artsy with the computer - I begin by trying to replace my Windows shell. If you're not sure what this is check out sites like Customize.org, Wincustomize.com and Shell City.

Basically there is a whole grass roots movement out there of artists and programmers that are creating all manner of replacements and improvements to Windows from nice icons and wallpaper to wholesale replacements of the windows GUI.

In the past I have used many shell replacements like LiteStep, Talisman and Hoverdesk to completely change how my system looks and works. To get what I mean imagine if your desktop had almost no icons on it, but it had a clock whose hands moved and kept the actual time... or a silver sphere in the center of your screen that when you click on it, your most recently used program icons whirled out around it for your use. Shell customizing allows you to do all kinds of crazy stuff that Windows was never really designed to do. Not that it can't... it just doesn't (thanks Microsoft)

I decided to err on the side of caution thsi time and not complete slag my system (as I have done many times in the past - it can be quite addicting onc eyou start tweaking windows ;))
So I am sticking with a great little utility called Object Dock. Object dock can replace or work with your task bar. It has a lot of cool little features and allows me to organize a lot of programs along the bottom of my computer for quick access. I am loving it. There's a free version available or for $20 you can have the full featured thing which includes many cool features.

The upside is that I should get to working on an actual website now for Dirty Unciorn Games (yeah!). The downside is I spend a lot of time creating little icons and organinzing shortcuts. Productivity sure does take a lot of work! :D


My ObjectDock - if you look close you can see little Flatlands and 12 to Midnight links hehe ;)

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Gaming slump...

Ugh work can drain the life out of you!

Over the weekend I was bursting with creativity. Overflowing with enthusism. As the long weekend faded so did my hope.

When I finally settled down into my chair on Tuesday morning, two hours late for work, the inevitable began... Like a salt-sucking monster from Star Trek, work began to drain the creative life force from me. It squeezed me like a lemon until I was a dried out crusty, rusty, discarded automaton at the end of the day.

It didn't help that every nice time extension I had received BEFORE the holiday weekend was suddenly yanked out from underneath me when I returned. Now I need to send four huge magazine columns much sooner than anticipated. On top of a mountain of other work. In fact in order to get everything done I will require a time machine or some other device for warping space & time. :P

When everything was said and done I was ready to blow off some mental steam and I was craving some gaming (something I dearly miss) . It was sheer luck that I stumbled across Temple of Elemental Evil at the local bargain-mart. I remembered playing a 100 time limit demo if this game last year and it was a lot of fun. Put out by Troika games, this is one of the few computer RPGs that uses turn based combat instead of click-fest mania. Best $10 I could spend right now as it affords me some pseudo-roleplaying (although roleplaying by yourself feels a bit like mental masturbation, pleasurable but short lived. Hope I don't go blind ;)

Of course playing computer isn't very productive, but sometimes you just have say phuck it and recharge the batteries.

I think everybody "self medicates" in some form or another to kill their doldrums. Some people smoke, some people drink, some take drugs (legal and illicit)... for me it's computer games. I like to unplug from real life for a while and let a pixel fantasy world keep stress and boredom at bay.

If I can just make it through this week I know there will be light at the end of the tunnel.

Alright enough talk. Kromm the Barbarian decrees that the blood God needs more Orc sacrifices to sate his fury so I'm off to save the world... or at least Hommlet.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

If you blog it they will come...

O.k. so a friend kindly pointed out that I'm not really updating my blog.

Now who in the world would want to read the rants, ravings and incessant droning of an old, nearly senile misanthrope like me???

Originally I created my blog so I could post on another friends blog. Now it just sort of functions as a pseudo-website for me... until I could get my lazy butt around to designing a real website (which when done someday will be parked at DirtyUnicorn.com )

I mean if I post my assorted daily drivel who would even read it?

I do admit a certain strange fascination with reading other blogs. It's fascinating (and a bit voyeristic) to peek into other peoples lives. To compare lifestyles and interests with people on the other side of the country and even the globe! So maybe... just maybe someone as demented as me is out there in the vast electronic ethereal who will find something I write here interesting.

Well I guess I've resigned myself to give it a shot.

If nothing else it's gotta be good for the psyche... or the id... or the karma... or something!?!

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Oh God I'm Blogged

Heaven help me now I have a Blog... as if my mouth wasn't big enough now I have a virtual foot to stick in it as well.

*sigh*

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My first published work! Awww it's so adorable ;)

Now go buy many copies and save a poor starving artist today!!!


Flatlands Cover

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The new logo - it's wip.
Probably always will be :-/


Dirty Unicorn Logo

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Saturday, August 20, 2005

Me ugly mug

(I can never take a good picture. This is about as good as it gets folks. yeesh)

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