Ptocheia.net » Creations

Pak’ma’ra Icon Painting Success!

admin — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 02:41:15 +0000

I finally finished the Pak’ma’ra icon painting. Yay!

It was fun putting gold leaf on it, aside from having to scrape it off of places it wasn’t meant to get stuck, that is. Oil painting is also both fun and exasperating. It can take forever, but is so much more interesting then acrylics at times. So I’m trying to decide if I’ll do another icon-style painting next or not. Have also been debating doing some portraits of either extinct animals or insects. I seem to have more fun painting critters then anything else.

Gaming, Misc Projects, Jobs, and Media (a.k.a. I Suck At Making Relevant Post Titles)

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:12:55 +0000

My current site project right now involves bunches of icons, and I wish I had more time for it. I’m also trying to get myself in gear with the Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest. I’ve never written a pitch before and it’s a tough slog at this point. My writing tendencies are entirely too stream-of-consciousness for their own good, and I need to focus more on a decent packaged whole when I write. In other news, I’ve eaten Mexican food every day this week except yesterday.

I finally beat Oasis on Insane. Were this 2004, when the game actually came out, it would likely be much more exciting. Nonetheless, Oasis has provided me with months of gameplay, and was totally worth the $6 I paid for it. On a similar note, rumors have it that a version of Civilization will be coming to Facebook this June. Aside from my occasional Scrabble obsession (and whenever someone flings a Pathwords invite at me), I’m not a big Facebook gamer. Yoville got tedious, and I haven’t logged into my account in months now. There’s a bunch of others (Mafia Wars, Farmville, etc.) I signed up for, played once, and then promptly forgot about. I think a problem with these games is that they’re mostly about doing the same thing over and over to acquire more stuff and build your character. None of which is all that interesting to me. One thing that is immensely interesting, however, is Civilization.

Job prospects = still slow. Didn’t get the job I interviewed for this past Friday. They might have a temporary use for me for a project that may or may not happen, however, which would be nice. I’d like to get more hours at Liberty, as though the pay is meager, it’s actually pretty fun to jump around by the side of the road all day long. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever felt this healthy in the middle of winter before.

I wish another Chick-fil-a would open up out here. This is because I want to do another First 100. Preferably without the blizzard this time around. I also really just want to eat chicken constantly, because it is so freaking good.

I finished reading “Jonathan Norrell & Mr. Strange” by Susanna Clarke recently. It was fabulous, a very British early 1800′s take on magicians and magic, quite long and involving with quirky characters, I highly recommend it. I’m currently reading “Nature Girl” by Carl Hiaasen, which is quite funny.

Finished watching Evangelion. Apparently the ending was poorly executed due to budget issues, and I thus need to see a movie called “The End of Evangelion” for proper fulfillment. I really liked the concept behind the ending, and we can hopefully get our paws on the movie sometime soon. Started watching Bleach, am enjoying it but with mixed feelings. The more it veers away from the “I need to kill this giant Hollow” plots, the more I like it.

Oh yeah, I totally scored some free fabric off of Craigslist. Giant bag, some scraps and some decent-sized pieces. I’ve got a pair of black shorts with a drawstring that never really fit me right, and I’ve got this great idea to convert it into a skirt, adding some fabric to the bottom in ruffles or something. I’ve got plenty of fabric to do this, now it’s simply the matter of locating said shorts. There’s this black hole that follows me sometimes, and likes eating things I’d prefer not to have eaten. I picked up a tank top from Old Navy with the final dregs of my gift card, and as a tank top it’s entirely too long, but with some fabric on the bottom it would make an awesome dress. I need to find a fabric really similar to the tank top’a fabric to execute this, however. Now, once I have made these items, I need to find or create circumstances where I would actually wear a skirt or a dress. Pants are just such a nice default, but it’s a shame that I keep making all of this crap and never wear it anywhere for the most part.

Oh yeah, crispy chocolate in my near future. Old Towne Arvada is having some sort of chocolate festival, whereupon I will enter items into their cookie contest and, with any luck, will win a giant pile of chocolate. Which would be good timing, as our Christmas chocolate is slowly running out!

Quest for the Fountain of Life is now available in paperback!

admin — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 19:12:52 +0000

So, about a year ago, I did Nanowrimo (aka National Novel Writing Month). I wrote a Choose Your Own Adventure style book, primarily as a means to test out the Storypath system I’d recently built on Writaur.com. Anyhow, I liked what I wrote, and have spent chunks of the last year editing it and finessing it and all that good stuff. Well, it’s finally done, and is available for the low low price of $10 at multiple fine internet establishments, namely Createspace and Amazon.

Quest for the Fountain of Life can also be read online for free! This way, people can preview the book first, and hopefully share the link with their friends.

I’m still trying to figure out how to market this thing, so I appreciate any suggestions on that, as well as any feedback on the book itself. Thanks!

Jewelry for fun and profit

admin — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 21:58:32 +0000

So here’s a rundown on how I did at the Black Market this past Thursday. I made a bit over $40 total, got rid of some stuff, and now have more stuff then I need. I made a bunch of jewelry in anticipation of people potentially wanting jewelry. However, for what I made, this was the wrong market it seems:

I had high hopes for the dice necklaces. I was selling them for $8 apiece. You can get ones just like it from Thinkgeek.com for $10 apiece plus shipping, or from Etsy.com for $15 plus shipping. Alas, not as many nerdy types there as I could have hoped for, so no go for any of them. I may try sticking the rest on Etsy to get rid of them, or hold onto them for future sales. No one was interested in glow in the dark bracelets either. I wonder where all the kandy raver and cybergoth types have gone, anyhow. I also did “experimental” jewelry involving keypads and beads. They looked rather tacky, so I’m probably gonna disassemble them. It’s a shame, I really like the look of computer and keyboard and phone innards, and I feel there’s much potential for jewelry use there, but hell if I can figure out anything attractive to make out of them. Oh, and for some bizarre reason no one wanted a bracelet that says “phallus”.

I did, however, make lots of money off of the brownies I baked. I also sold all of my remaining Magic card packs. Apparently someone out there loves some Homelands. No takers on the CDs, which was a bit surprising at first. But then I thought about it, and realised that part of the reason I was selling the CDs is that I prefer to just have everything on my computer rather then deal with pesky extraneous disks all over the place. Someday I will own no disks, just a teeny pile of memory sticks and hard drives that will hold everything in the world that is important to me, minus a Drew. And then I will be so infinitely portable, and can carry all of my worldly goods on my ultralight and fly around with geeses.

Art and Salamis

admin — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:53:23 +0000

I don’t think I’d mentioned this here yet, but a few weeks ago I got all excited over a working scanner and scanned a bunch of art, all of this mostly inspired by someone who contacted me regarding acquiring prints for a school library display she was doing on dystopian literature. So I had a few days of hardcore scanning…and rotating and delicately fitting things together, as the scanner is 8.5″ x 11″. But anyhow, if anyone needs art for their walls, I can hook you up (or rather, you’d hook me up by buying art!):

http://varoper.imagekind.com

I’ve got some other stuff I need to scan in, but it’s all lodged in a ceramics studio at some mall or another.

I’ve been working on some Salami Day t-shirt ideas, and am remembering the vast bridge of differences between Photoshop and Illustrator. D’oh! Progress is slow but progressing. I’d love to be able to print up a bunch myself (assuring they’d be good quality and a reasonable price), but I think the initial cost is more then I’d be able to handle, and I’m just gonna end up doing cafepress or zazzle or another of such sites (higher price for the final product, but little to no overhead). Maybe once I get an idea of if the random public might be interested in some quality salami-related clothing, I can consider beyond those options.

Fishie Picture!

admin — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 03:49:12 +0000

I heart fishes. And sometimes, I realise I should be flexing the ole artistic skills. And thusly, I’ll paint me some fishes.

I’m interested in finding some more art contests of the sort that actually have a theme you have to work with. There’s bunches of regular art contests out there, of the whole ‘submit something that is art and someone will jury it’ type, but I’m not too much of a fan, just too subjective. Guess it’s just the illustrator in me, but I prefer a theme to work with. In any case, I decided to look around the internets for some contests today and ended up being entirely too late for my own good. There was a contest to make poster art about a few different political issues (health care, etc), but alas, the deadline was before the inauguration. Also, I stumbled across a Pabst Blue Ribbon art contest. The deadline is tomorrow night, and that does not give me nearly enough time to slap together a contest-winning piece, especially after having seen the detail put into past year’s winners. There is, however, a poetry category, so if I can figure out a poem that has to do with PBR in the next 24 hours, maybe I’ll go for that one.

Bad Youtube Video Starring Velutha!

admin — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 06:23:16 +0000

I finally got the video camera working. I think the battery is near dead, I’ll probably need to pick up a new one. So I used the one I can have plugged into the wall instead to test stuff out. Got some wee little tapes for it, as well as a memory card. Circuit City is dead dead dead. As in zero employees to help me, no good at all! Ended up at Best Buy, where I actually got to make use of the employee asking me if I needed help.

Anyhow, I made a video starring one of our cats. She ‘dances’. It’s, uh, pretty bad. But then again, I just turned the camera on today! I need something better then Microsoft Movie Maker, though, it’s rather limited. Anyhow, if you feel like rotting your mind for 1.5 minutes, enjoy!