Drawings, Doodles and Thoughts

I started vidding about a month ago, and I've made one and a half Supernatural vids:

Only Babies Cry (song by The Ergs, originally Paul Baribeau) (warning, contains 5x18 content)

Boxcar (song by Jawbreaker) (this is just a minute of the song because I got kinda stuck on the second half)

I'm really really enjoying vidding. It's a lot less stressful for me than writing or drawing because my standards are so much lower - I haven't consumed nearly as many vids as I have stories or fan art, so I don't really have the same taste level. If I like the song and the clips then I'm happy. Of course that means my vids probably aren't very good, but ignorance is bliss. I'm hoping that my taste level will grow at the same pace as my vidding skills so the self-criticism isn't quite so overwhelming as when I write or draw.

At con.txt this year I learned about vexercises and I hope to do a few of them once my June fan art challenges are done. (I'm really down to the wire on finishing those yikes)

Wow, it's been a while. I'm mostly back because I'm finally feeling fannish about things again (in particular various actual play podcasts) and I've actually been drawing fanart! I don't know if this is where I'll end up posting things long-term but I'm so glad that Dreamwidth is still here. <3

1) (Pre-Calculus) How to simplify and solve higher-order equations. Short answer: feed them pain and suffering.
2) (College search) Bennington College is cool with non-traditional students submitting a non-graded paper for the analytical essay requirement.
3) (Physics) Gravity is neat.

I'm a student at a community college studying Computer Information Technology. I chose that major because I've loved programming for over ten years. (I was out of school for a long time after my first attempt at higher education.) I get discouraged from time to time, and I don't like that women are such a minority, but I keep coming back it. It's just too fun and interesting!

Lately I've been trying to be more serious about learning to code, instead of just treating it as a casual hobby. I also started getting kind of lonely, since I'm the only person I know who likes coding for fun. I started traveling to nearby cities for developer meet-ups, which is how I heard about Hacker School.

Hacker School is a program where you spend 3 months in New York with other programmers. The program itself is free, and they offer grants for women to help with living expenses. I thought this sounded fantastic, so I applied.

I didn't get in, but applying to Hacker School helped me think a lot about why I want to get better at programming and what my goals are. I realized that making real projects is a much better way to learn a language than just following tutorials. I also realized that I need to WRITE (ugh) and TALK (erg) more about what I'm learning.

So I'm starting a CS study group in my hometown and I'm going to continue going to meet-ups and conferences nearby, and now I'm going to write more about coding here in this journal.

Hacker School would've been awesome but I think this will be okay. :)

It's been a while!! I'm back because I'm gearing up to go to Con.txt next month and that reminded me I have an account. haha

SOOOOO excited for Con.txt. I've never gotten to hang out with other slash fangirls before. I tried to bring up slash at a yaoi panel at Ohayocon once and they just talked about all these new shows I've never heard of... I felt super old. Whatever happened to FAKE and Gravitation and Yami no Mastuei?? you know, the CLASSICS.

Working on some dolls of my favorite characters for the Ducks Deluxe Arts and Crafts Show. I don't have any of the fan dolls finished yet because they keep morphing into original characters, but they'll be in this style:



I have SO many characters I want to make... hopefully this weekend I'll be able to finally make some progress!

This first one was drawn for a capkink prompt. It's Steve and Peggy crossdressing and dancing. I maybe went a little overboard on the muscles. O.o It was just so fun to draw.....

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This next one is kind of a weird minimalist style for me, but that's because I wanted to make a design that I could use to practice screen printing. Since I'm new to printing and untrained and using terrible, homemade equipment, I tried to make the design as simple and forgiving as I could. I'm really happy with the how the design came out. Unfortunately, it was still too complicated for my skill level and the prints are pretty bad. ;_; (I ended up using an iron-on transfer for my t-shirt, and it looked good!!)

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Or posted in even longer... And I keep avoiding it because I'm like, augh, it's not worth resurrecting my journal to post this! But I need to get over it! SO HERE IS A DOODLE:

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Re: Alistair++ -- I played this right after finishing my second try at Fatal Hearts and it was pretty much the perfect antidote to that awfulness. You play a teenage girl who loves a WoW-like MMORPG, who finds out that an annoying fellow player calling himself Alistair actually goes to her school. She makes a bet with him that she can find out who he is. She has three suspects -- a computer club geek, a shy loner, and a rich, popular athlete -- and only a month to figure out which one is Alistair. It's a dating sim, but your character also has to solve the mystery, and there's some life sim aspects like maintaining her grades and social standing. Most of the characters are pretty three-dimensional, likeable and interesting. The story is very satisfying as well. Very very nice art and good writing tie it all together. The only thing that bugged me is the strange setting -- it didn't seem like it took place in Japan OR America, it was just generic dubbed anime-land or something, like an Inuyasha high school AU turned visual novel. haha But it's free and all around a very fun game!

Katawa Shoujo Act 1 -- This is weird. If I hadn't read the review on Play This Thing, I would have just assumed this game was a pervy hentai dating sim with no redeeming value whatsoever, and I wouldn't ever have played it. I'm glad I did. It's a visual novel about a boy who nearly dies because of a heart defect and is sent to a special school for teenagers with disabilities. He has to adjust to the fact that he's disabled and that he has to take tons of pills and can't play sports anymore, all while he's trying to adjust to this school where everyone else is disabled in various ways, too. It is a dating sim, because the different endings are with various girls you meet along the way, but it's not the obnoxious kind where you buy your way into her heart with gifts and by saying whatever she wants you to hear. It's more that the decisions you make will either endear you to a character or make her dislike you. (My first try, I was jerk to everyone and nobody really liked me in the end (also I almost killed myself accidentally)! My second, I ended up with Rin, a quirky, very spacey artist who paints an amazing mural for the school with her feet. I was very happy. ^_^) Great art, good writing -- my only complaint is that it's way too wordy for my taste and there aren't enough chances to make choices for your character. Still, it's definitely worth a play if you like this wort of thing! (And it's also free!)

I just finished playing Gun Mute and it's FANTASTIC. Definitely the best gay post-apocalyptic western shoot-em-up text adventure I've EVER played.

You play a Mute, a gunslinger trying to save his lover, Elias, from hanging. You have have to shoot up a bunch of robots, mutants, and lawmen on the way. All the characters that Mute runs into are really colorful and interesting. I'm terrible at text adventures, but this one cuts a lot of the confusing and irritating aspects of the genre. But it's still got plenty challenging and fun puzzles!

One of my favorite game endings ever as well!

And you can get it for free here!

Seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. This was my second time ordering from Baker Creek, and my second great experience with them. Extra seeds and super fast! I'd never ordered from SESE before, but I love the cute packages and fast shipping.

A bento box and riceball container from Meridel on the Help Haiti comm on LJ. They were expensive but they're really really nice quality. And so classy/cute!

Lycka Till CD and If it Ain't Cheap, It Ain't Punk documentary, from Plan-It-X Records. I joined the Friends of PIX club last year pretty much the second I heard about it and haven't regretted it since. I always get so excited when I get a package from PIX because there's always something good inside. The PIX documentary was okay, but nothing new to me. But I LOVED the Lycka Till CD. It's everything good about pop punk, but in Swedish!!! :D And occasionally English - "In yunior high, we called ourselves Communists. Contrary to the teacher, we knew the difference between Lenin and Stalin, LENIN AND STALIN". ha!