Home things

While the whole college thing seems easier and easier as August approaches, things at home have stayed the same as always, more or less. Preferrably more.

Leoni no longer works here. For those who don’t know who Leoni is (of course you don’t, as I’ve mentioned her a few times without saying anything else), she’s a mix between housekeeper and family friend, and we’ve known her for almost two decades. She lived here for much of the ’90s, but eventually moved out and started a family, as expected, and ultimately stopped working here somewhere in the first half of 2001.

She came back to work regularly three years later and until last month (or earlier this month?), being more of a nanny than anything else in the last twelve months. Now that she’s gone, needing to spend more time with her family, there have been some schedule changes so my nephew is always taken care of. Not only that, but my mother and sister handle all of the cooking at noon. It usually turns out well. Usually.

With my four-day breaks, and college work being almost a breeze, I get a lot of sleep and online time. What’s strange is that, despite all the free time, I am the exact opposite of productive. I have two ideas for Blender work floating around my head: the first one came in May, and the other one’s been around for no more than two days. The “old” idea has remained surprisinly fresh in my memory, but I have yet to grab that big tabloid-sized sketchbook and draw it before it fades away. I wouldn’t want either of those ideas to fade away, especially now that my portfolio is beginning to gather dust after not putting anything new in it since the redesign.

Anyway … it’s well past the halfway point of July (already?), and the hurricane season hasn’t given us anything worth panicking writing about. There have been a few storms, but they seem to have done little in terms of damage. Now, all we get is a little bit of rain from the cloudy sky. I like it when it’s cloudy. The clouds provide us with a nice shield from the usual scorching sun. On the other hand, the “threat” of rain is almost always there, but it’s not that bad a tradeoff … or is it?

As of late, the whole country has been complaining about long power outages. We’re lucky, as everyone else is getting them, not us. There was even a comic in one of the newspapers where a guy was going to pay the power bill and asked to be charged not for the blackouts, but for the lightouts. I’d like to believe that we already got our share of power outages last month, but it’d be foolish to think that the power company isn’t holding any more “surprises” for us in the near future.

It’s well past midnight, and my eyes are a bit heavy. Might be from the lack of sleep last night (more of those evil sheets that won’t stay in place, and a malfunctioning fan) or because there’s a fan aiming right at my face, resulting in dried-out eyes. I hope it’s the latter, because being so tired despite having a three-day work week is a clear indicator that something’s not quite right. I’m not the healthiest person in the family, that’s for sure.

And now, this post is over. For someone who spends his time doing little, I sure write a lot.

Rust, dust and pancakes

So, my camera didn’t die, after all.

Is it completely fixed? I just don’t know. My father had the bright idea (no sarcasm) of putting the camera in the oven and presto!, even the flash works again. It’s overexposing some photos with it, so it’s a good thing that I avoid it.

Now, college … while the What Goes Up poster thing has brought me joy, college adds far more weight to the other side of the scale.

Three classes a week. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I can’t decide which of the three classes is the least exciting, and I don’t know how well I’m doing in any of them, as I have done so little since this term began that it seems I’m just going there to wait until it’s time to come home. The lack of excitement in college scares me a little, because I might be getting a sample of what might be the rest of my life if I don’t work hard for what I really want.

The finish line. Graduation. Diploma. They’re so very close, calendar-wise, but the days are endless. The weekends are supposedly long, but they seem to fly by without me doing anything. That Blender idea I had earlier in the week has faded away. Not completely, but I’ve only got a vague image of what I originally wanted to do. That’s what I get for not sketching last Saturday, when I woke up early thinking about it, and spent the better part of the day picturing the final render.

I don’t know whether to go for a thesis next term, or wait until January to do a monograph (which is apparently much easier, but I’d have to wait). We’re being taught how to make a thesis in that seminar class, sure, but it seems there’s quite a lot of research and formality involved. And research, in this country where so much of it is forgotten or seemingly thrown away, doesn’t really spark my interest. I wonder if one does a thesis for a degree in animation? That’s gotta be fun.

Anyway, weekend has finally come for me. I was given the assignment of designing the signage for the Plaza del Conservatorio. Yes, that place. It was I who picked it, actually, because this assignment is for next week and other choices were much farther than I’d like to go. I probably won’t have to go anywhere, though, as I know the place well, and I’ve got more than enough photos to create a virtual tour of the place (hopefully that won’t be an assignment).

While college has been rather disappointing thus far since the term began, and while I’ve been thinking that I haven’t actually done anything worth any points, I hope to finish this one with decent grades. I just want to be done with it! I also have to do a couple of additional courses elsewhere, in order to complete sixty hours of “professional aptitude” needed for graduation. I’ve got about twenty of them covered by that encounter from last year and some free talks that I’ve attended. I was hoping I’d cover the remaining hours doing free stuff, but they’re too few and far between. Older students (those who entered before the 2004 changes) don’t have to do this, so it’s relatively new annoyance.

Again, the weekend is ahead of me. It should be better than the last one, given that I kickstarted it with a nice pancake dinner. I also made pancakes a couple of nights ago, but I had to use honey instead of syrup (thinking that it had been thrown away), but it didn’t taste bad. I reminded me a bit of honey biscuits. Just a while later, my brother found an unopened bottle of syrup that I had been searching for. Argh!

So, I gave pancakes another try. Now, the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Maple syrup may have expired in 2008 (that’s why I thought they threw it away), but I didn’t mind. Being unopened and all, and being full of preservatives, it doesn’t seem to be affected by time. It could probably stay “fresh” for much longer. I should buy a bottle and throw it in a time capsule to see how long it will last.

Okay, enough randomness from me. I’ve got a weekend to sleep through of work to think about. Enjoy some virtual pancakes:

And enjoy your weekend, whenever it may start for you.

When memes attack

It has finally happened. I thought it wouldn’t, but it did: I’ve been tagged for a blog meme. Not once, but twice!

First, I was contacted by dosox regarding his then-latest post, in which he’s posted six random things about himself. Apparently, he doesn’t like photographers, so a couple of my blogger friends’ hopes for befriending him are effectively dashed. Sorry, folks. Perhaps if you put the camera away for a second …

Anyway, as if that wasn’t enough (I was shocked, shocked!), the lovely (on the outside, it now seems!) sensico thought it would be fun to tag me, as well. I told you, reader(s), I can’t catch a break! I’m pretty sure it’s all part of a major conspiracy to destroy me, or the beginning of one. This would’ve made a nice ripped-off-the-headlines episode of The X-Files, had this been on headlines, and had that show not been cancelled … nearly seven years ago. Yikes. Seven years? Already? Sorry, Madonna, but time does not go by so slowly.

Anyway, I’m supposed to say six random things about myself, say who tagged me (done), and tag six other people. I don’t think I know six other people who might be willing to go along with this, but here go my random things.

1. Procrastination is the secret of my success … or lack thereof. But here seems to be the twist: the more I want to do something, the further away from doing it I seem to be. That’s why college work actually gets done,  and things like a Blender animation that’s longer than ten seconds have yet to happen.
2. I don’t think Seinfeld (the person or the show) is funny. I find it rather boring. Believe it or not,  I like Friends much better, to the point where I will sometimes say the lines before the characters do. My siblings look at me funny when I do that.
3. Tomatoes? Can’t stand them. Not by themselves, at least. I will tolerate a tomato slice in my hamburger or club sandwich, and I love ketchup, salsa and things like that, but I just can’t have tomatoes. They’re evil.
4. I’m an atheist. I’ve told my mother about it a couple of times (and the second time she reacted even worse than the first), and she thinks that I have to “work on that”. Well, it’s been working pretty well so far!
5. Mold creeps me out, especially bread mold. This one time, I was making a small stack of really perfect-looking sandwiches. When I was done, I noticed that one side of one of the sandwiches had a tiny bit of green mold on it. I threw them all away and had to make something else. What a waste, you will say, but, even if I had gathered the bravery to cut away the mold and down them all, they probably wouldn’t have lasted long in my stomach.
6. I’m very interested in urban exploration and abandoned places. I’ve bookmarked many sites and blogs about the subject. Unfortunately, there aren’t many urban-exploration-worthy places around here (they’re all so very dull, in appearance and history), and I’m not really the daring type to be sneaking in just to snap a few photos and post them here. Perhaps if I move elsewhere …

Okay, that’s pretty much all I can say without saying too much. Next time someone tags me, I’ll link them to this post, that’s for sure! I think I may have eliminated half of my brain cell count in this post (and I have my two taggers to blame for it).

Anyway, I’m supposed to tag six people. Have they been tagged before? Will they say “oh, no, I can’t”? I can’t be sure, but here they are:

• roentarre (that’s what you get for being a regular commenter!)
• Arcticulates (that’s what you get for giving me such a nice review!)
• Sandie Lee (that’s what you get for making me comment!)
• Shy (that’s what you get for … blogging!)
• PetLvr (that’s what you get for loving pets!)
• polybore (that’s what polybore gets for using 3rd person!)

Those are it. Will any of them follow this meme? You’ll have to check their blogs!

So, that was me, following a blog meme. How do you like the image at the top? Inkscape, of course.

A sign of life

No, this blog isn’t as dead as everyone will have you believe. In fact, it’s very much alive (at least its author is). I was offline for much of last week, and I’ve been swimming in the thick waters of college work and exams. In fact, I’m pretty sure I did quite bad on that last exam I had on Friday …

Anyway, enough of that. To show that I’m not dead, and to make this post a bit more extensive, here’s a render of a strange model I did on Thursday (one of the offline days).

It’s either a dragon, a variation on Clarabelle Cow, or an offspring of the two. What do you think?

A 2008 of random nothingness

I said that I would probably do a retrospective post of the things I did this year. But, lucky for you, reader(s), that probability has become a fact. Without further ado, a look back at a whole year of me in blogging.

January-May: Last days of the old blog

While I have no desire whatsoever to go back to Live Spaces, I’m eternally grateful to it for being home to my first ever blog. It was a very gentle easy introduction to the world of blogging. However, from January 2007 to my final post in June 2008, I only managed to do ten posts. Ten lengthy posts, those were (well, most of them) but, still, ten posts.

I don’t really blame my lack of dedication for such a small amount of posts, but rather the lack of exposure that old blog had. No views, no comments. All to myself, and there would’ve been no difference if the blog had been a private one. After all, no one but me was reading it. While I was (and still am, for the most part) writing this for myself, for the sake of having a journal, I needed a little incentive. Proof that there was something else to it. So, I looked at my choices, and ended up making the right one.

June-July: Meet the (word) press

I had been to this WordPress.com thing many times before, I’m sure. I just didn’t know what it had to offer as a blog hosting service. After looking at its front page, I realized that there was an actual community of people, hobbyists and professionals alike.

Reading the list of features, and looking at all the pretty screenshots, I knew it had everything I was looking for and more. I went to register and … oh! I was already registered. Turns out I’d been having problems commenting on some other WordPress-based site, and I thought registering would solve it (it didn’t work). So, I made use of that pre-existing account and created my blog, using the same title as my old one, picking a theme to my liking and creating a fancy header for it.

In my first two months of posting, I wrote some rather long posts and wrote very often. But, I was holding back a bit on what I wanted to say. I had not yet received comments from anyone I hadn’t met in person, and was a little afraid of it. Wanting to jump into the shark’s mouth a bit more often, I looked, once again, at my choices. I seem to have made the right choice, by the look of things.

August-September: Enter the catalog

Yes. BlogCatalog. It had been years since I had become so involved in a community such as the one I found there. I had been active in the Blender community since late 2001,  and that was pretty much it. I’m about to jump ship on that one, though (too crowded, etc.), and I need some other place to hang out. BlogCatalog seems like that place for now.

Shortly after joining that site, I started getting comments from new people, as well as some actual visits. In fact, most people who run across this blog come from there. And some of those have actually visited more than once! Cue the collective gasp.

October-November: Thousands of words

It was at this point that I started feeling more comfortable with posting images and photos in posts. I had posted images, sure, but on a more sporadic basis. Most of my posts were text-only. Now, it’s the opposite case. I enjoy taking/making pictures so much, I’ve made some photo-intensive posts to make the reading much easier (exhibit A, exhibit B) and, perhaps, even pleasant (exhibit C).

December: Leisurely writing

My ongoing vacation started at the end of November, and I looked forward to doing a lot of writing here. I took my time to blog for a good cause, in a post that was originally going to be something else. I managed to get some Blender work done and received some nice comments for it.

I celebrated the holidays, slept a lot, wrote a lot. That’s all I can say about the rest of the month (it’s still in progress, isn’t it?).

What’s next?

What happens now? As my 2nd anniversary of blogging approaches (on the 11th, next month), I can only look forward to becoming a better writer/blogger, to post more of my work here and just … to keep doing what I do, because I love it.

Of course, I’ll need you, reader(s) to keep me motivated and stuff. If I don’t get any indicators that this blog is being read, I might not post as often. I wouldn’t completely stop, but this place would be dead for months between one post and the other. That is only up to you.

Thus ends the retrospective, probably the first of any kind that I’ve written. There might still be a post before the year ends. Goodbye for now.