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Thursday, December 27, 2012

Life - What Gamers Want

Life - What Gamers Want

Endymion86 on Reddit today wrote a neat piece that I thought I'd share here.

The One Thing That All Gamers Want...

...more than anything, is time.

Money? Sure, that'd be great.

Gifts of games? Awesome.

A girlfriend? Hell yeah.

We get home from our 9-5 job, or from classes at college; household chores are done, bills are paid, dinner is prepared, and finally, FINALLY, our time has come. We finally have a chance to sit down and turn on our battlestation, hear that wonderful little "boo-beep!" noise when our 360 lights up, or the melodious tones of the PS3's cross media bar, and our hearts that have grown cold from the harsh reality outside begin to warm up just a tad.

An hour goes by, maybe two, but then you look at that clock and realize you have to sleep, and get ready for the next day. There's that feeling again - like you've been robbed of your time. How is it possible that it's already 11:00 PM? It just doesn't feel right, or fair. It's time to start that endless cycle all over again.

Some of us have four hours a day, and the chronological freedom to work on that Steam library that keeps growing and growing. Some of us have only twenty minutes to lose ourselves in the universe of that $5 bargain bin game that's four years old, because we had just enough left over from our last paycheck. It's wonderful, either way.
So no matter how much time you have...

...appreciate it.


The entire Reddit thread can be found here: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/15j41o/the_one_thing_as_gamers_that_we_all_want/

Monday, December 24, 2012

Life - Slowly Better

Life - Slowly Better

My niece, 8, today was playing around with a photo-booth arcade game, where it takes your picture and then you select boy or girl and it prints you out an ID card. She printed two, the boy one, she printed by accident and it's her photo next to a "Pro Skateboarder" ID. The girl one, she prints and shows me proudly. It doesn't say seamstress, or waitress, or homemaker, or secretary, or princess. It reads "CSI". The battle is being won folks, slowly, but surely.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Mikey Neumann - Writing - On Depression

Mikey Neumann - On Depression

Mikey wrote an eloquent and moving piece about depression tonight, going through some difficulties and what it all is.  The community is really reaching out to him in so many ways and with so much love right now, its amazing.

http://diagnosismia.blogspot.ca/2012/12/what-depression-is.html

I'll write more on this later.

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Carl Sagan - The Pale Blue Dot



Carl Sagan - The Pale Blue Dot








From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.


Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Speeches - Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator Speech"

Speeches - Charlie Chaplin "The Great Dictator Speech"

Transcript follows as from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPqd_9T5Zx4

Transcript:

The Jewish Barber (Charlie Chaplin):
I'm sorry but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black men, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each others' happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Painting - Chelsea

Painting - Chelsea

So for an exercise I did a painting from reference of my friend Chelsea, who is literally on the other side of the world right now living it up!  I missed her so I ask her about it, went and found a picture on facebook (she's very photogenic) and did this on my wacom.  It took me about 4 hours from start to finish, not bad painting from reference. 

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Sixed - Interlude 2 - NaNoWriMo

Sixed - Interlude2 - NaNoWriMo

Interlude 2

“Do dolphins dream of an electric sea to save lost souls?”

I miss her.

I drifted between here and there. Lines of code flowed through me, unending in beauteous streams of falling digital water. Each one was a thing, a life, a person, a moment. They cascade all around me, entwined like a spider’s web across time and place, linkages between forgotten pieces of recollection. They are once things, now the digital memories of being forgotten.


Saturday, November 3, 2012

Sixed - Chapter 3 - NaNoWriMo

Sixed - Chapter 3 - NaNoWriMo

Chapter 3

“If we studied well the horrors we visit upon ourselves in waking moments, it’s a wonder that we might ever willingly close our eyes to sleep.”

Miranda stepped out of the shower. Her mind was already turning, pieces within pieces, things within moments. She stared at the reflection of herself, naked, through the mirror. She liked to think that perhaps a vicious, beautiful redhead started back at her. Tall, but definitely not the willowy damsels of yore fairytale. Miranda was iron for a spine, compact muscle and the physique of a dancer who knew it.

Monday, October 29, 2012

Life - NaNoWriMo

Life - NaNoWriMo

So once again this year I'm participating in NaNoWriMo.  Or National Novel Writing Month.  On top of a full student courseload.

Whee!

I'm crazy.  Anyway I intend to pursue Sixed as my novel of choice this year.  We'll see how it goes!  I'll be updating this blog hopefully more throughout November with chapters and meanderings from NaNo.

Monday, October 22, 2012

Musings - Morning Tea

Musings - Morning Tea

The slow march of sun against glass as I watch light creep along my teacup.  Monday morning and shadows fade away.  We all have somewhere to be of pressing need.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Free Writing - Sound

Free Writing - Sound

Sound noise audio.  Audio.  A girl plays a flute.  Play.  Plays.  The sound of chimes, wind, wind chimes.  A soft breeze and the flood between silence and noise.  Noise.  A tone for contact, allegro, allegro brisk, quick, allegro, a flute, a girl plays a flute and there is contact  Contact, brief, brisk contact.  Contact.  A note, lilt, up, down.  On and on, staccato.  Brief, precise, noise.  Noise.  Static.  Harsh, broken, flaring up and down.  Noise, static, the sound of televisions on and off, blips, beeps, clicks.  Click.  Repeated, firing, fast, machine gun, clicks.  Clicking, sputtering, empty, dry, dry noise.  Sound.  Tempo.


Friday, October 19, 2012

Writing - Diary of Black Death

Writing - Diary of Black Death

I think I'll stay in this quaint little English village to begin with.  The countryside is beautiful, and I am oft finding myself taken with moments of profound joy looking skyward.  The inhabitants however are rude and jostling.  Won't they be in for a surprise.  They ask too many penetrating questions of strangers and travelers.  Still I think I'll put my feet up here for a time.


Writing - Hide and Seek

Writing - Hide and Seek

"Brian, come here."

There was just a tinge of hesitation on Brian's part, but dutifully he stood and set aside the laptop.  Walking over to where Amy was standing at the window.

"What is it?"

Writing - Enchilada Microwave Dinner

Writing - Enchilada Microwave Dinner

Beep.

Beep.

Garret mumbled to himself.  Consciousness couldn't come fast enough.  Bleary eyed and blinking.

What was that?

Writing - Opera Jumps

Writing - Opera Jumps

Could she hear it?  Outside the buzz, the crowd, the sounds and the feeling.  It permeated the senses, overrode the stone and concrete around them.  Somewhere far away, she knew that the orchestra was warming up, they would tune and re-tune.  Somewhere else a singer was warming up her vocals, others were moving around, checking paperwork, lights came on and disappeared, sounds erupted out of speakers.

She jumped.  Hopping anxiously from one foot to another, then springing with both feet planted as high as possible.  Everyone had a role to play, everyone in a moment to do a something that fit all the facets.  They played, blew, sang.  She moved.  So different, so alike.

Not alone though, never alone.



That was a piece of 2 minute writing I did tonight at the prompting of http://www.twitter.com/ainsleyhillyard Her prompt: Opera jumps.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Thoughts - Casual Racism

Thoughts - Casual Racism

I grew up in Calgary, which we affectionately call the 'Texas of the North'.  Truth is that I grew up a Chinese Canadian, a son to immigrant parents and for a long time didn't speak (and still don't read) Mandarin.  I had to bridge two cultural worlds, Chinese which I always felt I disinherited until I had left home, and being a Canadian.

It wasn't until I was in grade school that I became aware of race.  It first began to prevade into my life in terms of limitations.  In that way that schoolchildren will bully and ridicule, being Chinese meant I couldn't do some things.  Being Canadian meant I couldn't do some Chinese things.  It was as though race and culture were at cross-purposes to the things I wanted in life.


Saturday, October 13, 2012

Musings - Home

Musings - Home

"Hey so are you all settled in yet?  Got the new place feeling like home?"

Sometimes, privately and in the wee hours of the night I worry that nowhere will ever really feel like home.  I'm all settled in, unpacked and have all my 'stuff', but this isn't home.  Actually where I sleep hasn't felt like home in years. They are just places, and space.  Space to be confined by, defined by, and secreted away from the world in.

With the advent of the internet, I take the friends who want to be a part of my life with me.  I rarely go a week without hearing Patrick's voice, my parents and sister call, my other friends leave messages on facebook, skype, twitter or my phone.  I generally know the best way of getting in contact with most of my friends, and the ones who know...well they know I can always be found on most communication systems.

And the friends who are too busy, or don't want to communicate won't.  That's the way life goes isn't it?

Monday, September 24, 2012

Painting - xkcd Paintings

Painting - xkcd Paintings


So a couple days ago last week, on xkcd there was a great webcomic done by Randall Munroe.

I adore xkcd, and the webcomic was titled Click and Drag.

You can view it above.  What rapidly becomes apparent as you look at it is the incredible scope of this particular webcomic.  What Randall has done is created actually a much more intricate, massive image that is fully scrollable.  There are probably more than a hundred little inside jokes, pieces of art, nuanced characters, or lines throughout this massive image. 

It really got me thinking, partially in awe, but also in terms of the digital divide for us between computer generated work and physical mediums.  The two are irrevocably split in many ways now, even people skilled in one medium, may not ever pick up skills or have needs to in the other.  I know many painters who profess no skill at all in cgi, and cgi artists who have never mixed paint before in their lives.

If you wanted to, at proper appropriate scale print out this comic it would be incredibly large.  Probably impossibly large, and without the scalability would be impossible to really appreciate as a piece of art.

And yet here it is, freely available for anyone to look at.

Everything on the internet, for the most part is freely available to look at.  It's our art, ours, as artists, we took it back.  We took it out of the hands of museum curators, or critics, or reviewers.  We put it up where we will in our own little slices as we choose.  It shocks, or confronts...or it doesn't.  It's available for the viewing, or it isn't.  We archived it, this is ours, put up on the internet.  It's us.

Anyway, I took these and did some work painting the otherwise black and white images.  It was a lovely exercise in working on my cloud paintings.  I hope you enjoy.


Saturday, September 8, 2012

Painting - Artwork Translation

Painting - Translation: Van Gogh's Starry Night Over The Rhone to Jackson Pollock / Jean-Paul Riopelle

For this final assignment, we were tasked with taking a certain classical style painting, and translate it to a more modern art movement style.  I picked Van Gogh, but instead of doing the famous 'Starry Night', I chose a slightly (barely) more obscure one called Starry Night over the Rhone.  Taking that painting, here's my process of making it into an Abstract Expressionism, similar to Jackson Pollock or Jean-Paul Riopelle

Read on:

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Painting - Clyfford Still

"I am not interested in illustrating my time. A man's "time" limits him, it does not truly liberate him. Our age - it is one of science, of mechanism, of power and death. I see no point in adding to its mechanism of power and death. I see no point in adding to its mammoth arrogance the compliment of a graphic homage."
 -Clyfford Still

Rewrite Sinclair - Train Girl

Rewrite Sinclair - Train Girl

That girl has cuts on her hands.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Painting - Lifeline in Paint

For an assignment in my painting class, we were tasked with creating an original painting utilizing ten specific shades of colour.  The specific shades were to be utilized how ever we chose, in any combination.  Each hue was to represent how we felt a year in our life was, ten hues, each for a year spanning our last decade.  We were otherwise given very little instruction.

It was, in many respects a very free-form exercise.  I picked my hues, wrote a brief blurb for each, figured out what each year was or meant, and then simply went to task.  What follows is a fantastic expression of who I am on canvas, but also impressively cryptic.  It is me, in many respects, but only through the rationalization of my own head.

I did the following on stretched canvas.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Hearing - Sound

Hearing - Sound

Sometimes when I close my eyes, in the silence of darkness...I can hear music.  It sounds like such a strange thing, but I think I can hear the life around me ebb and flow.  I hear the sounds of wind rushing past life, it cascades and swirls around my mind.  I can hear the breathing and the heartbeats of a million souls.  There is a kind of casual peace to them, a growth and reworking of hammer to anvil.

A friend of mine, is preparing to teach children soon.  One of the constraints on the position of her teaching is that she cannot touch on a number of subjects.  One of the constraints, is that she cannot teach instruments.  Singing is alright but there are no instruments permitted where she teaches.  She cannot even show them how to make maracas.  I wonder what music sounds like to them.

Do they hear it the same way I do?  Do they hear strands of creation in the vibrancy of tone?  Is it all just noise the way some things are?  Have they been taught to tune it out, that it has no worldly existence at all?

I wonder what they would think if the heard the things in my mind.

Sometimes at sunset, I can hear music.  A violin plays across the wind, just barely audible.  I shift the balance of my body to hear it better, straining and yet still.  I can hear it, my head tilts ever so slightly, imperceptibly towards it.  I nod and continue to listen to the people around me, overhear their conversations, consider their words.  But I hear.  I hear music.  Tone and song, it's so far away, quicksilver, mercurial.

What do you hear?

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Painting - Goodbye in Mono-Red

A painting study I did today for colour theory class.

A Goodbye in Mono-Red

Enjoy

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Writing - Sixed

Writing - Sixed

A faint veneer of dust covered the streets of Markesh.  If a person looked too closely, they might see that same faint veneer on the skin and in the hair of everyone on the streets of Markesh.  It was a city of gravel, dust and neon.  Post-modern steel and glass had given way to grafitti, dried black chewing gum and the stink of piss.

The once-promise of a bright future with robotic servants now a disarray beneath junkies and whores.  Markesh was dust and regret.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Life - Happy

Congratulations.

I'm sorry I wasn't there, but I'm certain it was a beautiful day.  You always had a knack for brightening the day and making things beautiful.  I'm sorry that we haven't talked much, I take responsibility for that one.  Life is a long and winding path, and ours just happened to be different this time.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Drabbles - Ink

I am watching the slow process of ink flow down the drain.  Nature will write the next story as it evolves in flowing lines to nothing.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Designs - The League of Assassins



The world is a changing place in the new 17th century. The burgeoning development of gunpowder is poised to alter the field tremendously. But when the full blood moon rises over Rome for a fated 3 days, shadows descend with steel. Against the backdrop of festivity, five guilds of Assassins from all across Europe will test one another in a trial of traps, subterfuge and blood. Up for grabs, held in the hand of the Master Assassin, is a contract which will change the course of history. The contract to kill King James I of England.






The year is 1604, and a War of Assassins has descended on Rome.



Friday, July 27, 2012

Quotes - Steve Grand

“Life is not made of atoms,it is merely built out of them. What life is actually 'made of' is cycles of cause and effect, loops of causal flow. These phenomenon are just as real as atoms - perhaps even more real. If anything, the entire universe is actually made from events, of which atoms are merely some of the consequences.”
― Steve GrandCreation: Life and How to Make It

Secret - Draw Something

A secret.

Every time I open my phone, I deliberately don't address the the little indicator at the top that mentions you have sent me a poke regarding our Draw Something game.

Because every time I see it, I smile a little inner smile for the memories of a time gone by.

And miss you and those days.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Drabble - Dust

Dust is the indicator in our lives of the slow passage between now and then.  It builds up in the corners and shares the world we live in, turning everything to grey.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Painting - Good Women Hue Study

For my colour theory class, I am working on doing a hue study.  Taking a photograph, reducing it to 9 hues and then painting the shaded declinations of such.  It's pretty interesting, albeit I immediately wanted to do a Good Woman piece and the difficulty of painting such fine details is almost inarticulate.  Also Alida, your hair is exhausting to sketch out.

Just sayin'.

Anyway this is ongoing this week, I'll post more as I finish sections.






 This one is the initial trace sketch, with just a little bit of black painted in the corner (because I forgot to take the picture before I started with the black.


This one is with the black shadow areas filled in.



The finished painting, the light makes it look pretty wonky and it's much darker than it seems....but oh well.  The painting was supposed to be split in half with one side in grey scale, and the other in a single hue (in this case blue). 

Here's the original photo by Marc Chalifoux here:

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Quotes - Adventure

"The state of mind of a kid when he enters a cave alone must be realized in the game.  Going in, he must feel cold air around him.  He must discover a branch-off to one side and decide whether to explore it or not.  Sometimes he loses his way."

-Shigeru Miyamoto

Monday, July 16, 2012

Dream - Vault Valentine

I walked as a ghost through your life.  A strange thing with empty thoughts, passing through corridors of perhaps and maybe.  Equally on both hands, the possibility of what was and could have been.  I saw the friends, the trials, the mundane and the lovers.  I felt little, for we were but passing friends as children, I had no investiture in what you were or what you were becoming.

It was a casual kind of interest, a curiosity without caring.  Moving through places I'd never been before, how our lives had diverged!  What to say though, should ever we meet, what could I possibly comment on or think to mention.  But silence as we passed, strangers to one another on the train.

Am I so different?

Are you?

I came upon a place I'd never been, passing through walls.  It was dark and smelled of old cardboard, dusty and damp, faded around the edges.  I poked at a few boxes, walked across the concrete and thought what might have brought me here when I came upon a sealed case.  Sharp iron edges adorned it, and a heavy steel ring of numbers on the front.  Curiosity warred within me, and experimentally I spun the dial.  Two clicks to my ear where I should have heard four.

I ran my fingers over the cold metal, and then on an impulse lifted the heavy thing up and on its back.  There taped to the bottom, a faded brown piece of paper with the numbers scrawled in your handwriting.  With a casual twist, the safe opens and inside are shoeboxes filled with paper.  Statements, forms, invoices, information.  Uninteresting, a canvas of normality to life.  Tucked away in the back, a small plastic bag with a handful of scraps in it.

I pause then, without knowing why.

A tiny, faded little red piece of paper.  My handwriting there, and a little glittering sticker.

The memory is elusive, I cannot remember making it, but it sits here alone in your world.

I shut the safe, and vanish though shadows into waking.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Reflections - NY Cab Driver Story

Below what follows is a story, that has been circulating around the internet for some time.  I read this story a few years ago, thought "that's nice" and then that was it.  I mean, as a writer, it's altogether too easy to fall into a peculiar trap of disregarding everything you read.  You understand the essence of story, the construction of fiction, and how it makes you and your audience feel.  But to immediately disregard everything does something to the soul...it taints it, depresses it, shades it in greys.

So I try not to ask myself too much about whether something is 'real' or not, and just enjoy a good story for what it is.  But then people attacked its legitimacy, people who are more cynical than me, and there's something inherrently desparaging about that.  To say that someone is outright a liar.  There's a difference between attacking and searching for truth, one is pursued for intrinsic gain, the other is an assault on intellectuality.  So Kent Nerburn wrote a follow-up.  Which I would like to archive here to think more on.


Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Drabble - Memory Glass

A memory held in the fingers.  It's edges worn and soft with age, but the colours still vivid as if yesterday.  I traded my memory of you to a wanderer, and I can't remember why.

Friday, June 29, 2012

Dreams - Cat

Dreams - Cat

A curious dream that felt more like a memory.  I dreamt of a white cat that accompanied me everywhere, eyes of green and a sanguine languidity to her every motion.  We sat and talked for a long time, of dejection, and fresh fish.  We walked long through a jungle of concrete, abandoned and quiet, where mildew and rain were friends, where the shuffle of gravel and the calls of gulls the symphony of our motions. 

Monday, June 25, 2012

Drabbles - Sword and Glass

A warrior holds a shard of glass and a sword.

The sword to carve a new tomorrow.

And the shard of glass, a memory of yesterday.

Together the only things that might save his soul today.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Life - Goodbyes

Life - Goodbyes

I often like to say life is a series of meetings, and partings.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Life - Move

Life - Move

Posted to Facebook:
Well I believe the cat is officially out of the bag...I have news for those whom care: I got accepted into a design school in Vancouver, which startlingly begins July 1st. All month I've been hurriedly packing up 8 years of my life in Edmonton and preparing for the move. I leave Edmonton this Saturday and I won't be back for probably at least the two years that my program is.

I have a little time the rest of this week if people want to grab a coffee, catch up or otherwise, but I'm rapidly running out of time. Thanks everyone, and I am sure I'll see my friends down the winding road of life.

Dreams - Don't

Don't - Dreams


A vivid dream I remember well, with arms wrapped around my chest I could just barely smell the scent of her.  It was a moment outside myself, as I felt the contact of someone so other and akin to me.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

22 Rules of Storytelling - By Emma Coats

From http://io9.com/5916970/the-22-rules-of-storytelling-according-to-pixar

On Twitter, Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coats has compiled nuggets of narrative wisdom she's received working for the animation studio over the years. It's some sage stuff, although there's nothing here about defending yourself from your childhood toys when they inevitably come to life with murder in their hearts. A truly glaring omission.

Friday, June 8, 2012

Thorn - Syr Mathri

Thorn - Syr Mathri on Fenrir

Rake - Churches

Rake - Churches


Don’t go into churches. Technically the rule was a lot longer than that. Don’t go into churches, community halls, schools, gyms, basically anywhere that during the outbreak had been coordinated and repurposed as a treatment centre. Malls could be bad, the university area was bad, there were lots of such places that were a bad idea to get too deep into.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Undelivered - Steeple

Undelivered: Steeple



I remember clearly, we were walking alongside one of the tanks, and we heard that nose, that "Ping".  A sniper.  Somewhere.  I looked on ahead and above the town, there was the church, and a steeple.  And the captain, he looks at all of us lying down and he points at me.

"Steeple!"

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Life - Don't Go

Life - Don't Go

"Please don't go tomorrow...please don't leave." - She said.

And my heart broke.

I have to, but I wish I didn't.

Life brings us together for such short meetings and partings...that is the way of it.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Life - My Life Is G

Life - My Life Is G

Today was amazing, a quick summary of things to remember for the rest of my life that happened on this day.