Heavy Weather

Just finished Heavy Weather, the last in-print Bruce Sterling book I hadn’t already read, dammit. Something about that man’s prose style can just ping me like a tuning fork, except when I get annoyed at how often he repeats his phrases. Anyway, Heavy Weather is chock full of great, almost magical, descriptions of storms and tornados. There’s also a cast of eccentric characters, but not all that much time is spent on any but the two sibling protagonists.

I tried out iAddressX, a utility that gives me menubar access to my Apple Address Book app. Decided I didn’t like it enough to keep it, but meanwhile it’s rearranged all of my menubar icons, and I think I’ve gotta live with it till I log out and back in. Bleah.

I wasn’t much good for anything else this evening. I don’t seem to have any confidence at the moment. I’ll see if I can scrape some together in my sleep.

Alien world right here on Earth

Thanks to bruceb for the link to this National Geographic story about an armored sea snail. In addition to the shell that most snails have, this one’s also got magnetic iron scales covering its underbody and foot. As with so many weird creatures, this was discovered in a deep-sea hydrothermal vent, a hostile alien environment we don’t have to go into space to find. The photo of the as-yet-unnamed beastie looks a whole lot like something out of Farscape.

BFL: lower-body

The lower-body continues to be the poor stepchild of my workout routines. Not a disaster, since my legs get a hefty workout just carrying my fat ass around, and my ab routine is pretty tough.

(  Lower-body workout numbers  )

Month meme thingie

I’m not quite sure what the point of this one is supposed to be, but I picked it up via chanaleh, and I’m feeling sheep-like today. You go to this entry, copy the text for your birth month, then: cross out (<strike> tag) the stuff that’s not true, bold the stuff that’s very true, and italicize what you’re not sure of or that might be true depending. Here’s me:

FEBRUARY:
Abstract thoughts. Loves reality and abstract. Intelligent and clever. Changing personality. Attractive. Sexy. Temperamental. Quiet, shy and humble. Honest and loyal. Determined to reach goals. Loves freedom. Rebellious when restricted. Loves aggressiveness. Too sensitive and easily hurt. Gets angry really easily but those not show it. Dislike unnecessary things. Loves making friends but rarely shows it. Daring and stubborn. Ambitious. Realizing dreams and hopes. Sharp. Loves entertainment and leisure. Romantic on the inside not outside. Superstitious and ludicrous. Spendthrift. Tries to learn to show emotions.

More sketching

Y’know what I used to hate about commercial radio? How they’d just cycle the same forty or so Billboard chart hits over and over again. Y’know what I hate about alternative net.radio? How they just cycle the same forty or so alternative rock hits over and over. Anyone know of a free net-radio feed from a station that has a huge music library from lots of different genres and just plays whatever they think is cool? Sorta like Vin Scelsa does? (Sadly, Vin won’t let his show go out on the net, because of the limitations the FCC would put on him.)

I’m feeling better now; got some good sketching done. I really like how I got the girl’s hair in the upper-right of this image — the one that looks like it’s all hair, like a darker Cousin It. I’m fond of how I got the highlights working. There’s a bit of a Robert Crumb feel to that.

( Sketches from Ground )

I also like some of the stuff that I haven’t scanned in, some character designs that worked pretty well.