It is freaking terrifying outside today, I'm so glad I don't have to go out in it. The wind's gusting up to about 50mph - that's what woke me up, and wouldn't let me back to sleep this morning, it was so loud. It's also dropped a bit more snow on us. SNOW!!! GODDAMNIT ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! NO MORE!!! gahhhhhh.

So, it has been a good day to stay inside and work on things that needed working on - namely, cards for Tom's capstone. I did up some sketches maybe a week or two ago, with Tom looking on, to get the ideas for the suit images right. A couple nights ago, I re-did and refined those drawings, and, my sword is really freaking pretty. He would like the coloring to be done vector-y.. which hasn't exactly happened yet, I started trying to do it but then.. uh, kinda fell back into my more usual approach. But! A rough version of most of a suit is done (the face cards are going to require more complicated drawing - but I have a style in mind, and Tom loves one rough sketch I did so yay).

This is what the five of sabers looks like:


...here's hoping that lets us click for a larger. If not, I'll upload elsewhere and link it, I've never used Blogger's built-in image hosting thing.

So, the coloring needs to be vectorized, and the whole thing will get some cleaning up (like the numbers are all drawn via the wacom, since I have no fonts installed, so the edges and things are a little messy still), but in general, that would be it. I drew up the sword, and was tweaking with color and things in Photoshop (Photoshop! oh god how I missed it, though it's only been like a week since the reformat! I downloaded CS2 and put it on my Windows, which I'm still booted into), Tom came over a few times to take a look. At one point, when I'd about reached a pause-and-consider point, Tom was looking at it and got all excited and started pointing at the screen and it turns out, had decided on the layout of the card. So that part's all his. :) The arrangement of the counters by the numbers, we ganked from one of the couple of Sabacc decks floating around online that someone had randomly created. (At one point, Tom had thought of using one of these decks - but they were done years ago, so the graphic work is obvious, and the face cards are disgustingly overdone.) Initially there was a white background, but Tom wanted to try other colors, and decided a light blue looked nice. (I still lean toward the white - but this is something different, while not being too far out of reason, which is a good balance. These cards are meant to be a step farther along than where ours are now.) I couldn't resist - I put in a few bits of grunge, to make it look like the cards have actually been used. No complaint yet. ;)

I'm taking a break now, might do a little more work tonight, but probably not too much, as I have work early tomorrow (be there at 9, so, be out waiting for the bus by 8:35, awake by 7:30). And I need to make Tom and I some food for when he gets back from class, I think we've each had toast and chocolate cake and.. well, he had one of his fried sandwiches, I've been nibbling on a few things. I do have all the fixings for a really yummy looking smoothie recipe I found the other day (modified slightly - using plain yogurt instead of pineapple, in hopes of convincing Tom to have some, didn't want the pineapple to be overpowering; and will probably throw in a bit of ginger or something random), that might not be a bad idea. It's a little colder than smoothie weather, but, I need to get something healthy in me.

My other ambition for today (besides getting the last few dirty dishes off the counter - I'm doing better at keeping up lately, but, I'm determined to keep that counter clear!) is learning "Forces". I forget what triggered it, but something made me need to download the Berserk soundtrack (as I'm not sure on which of the eleven cds, if any, my original copy was on) last night. OH! I know. We were watching more Kenshin (which, btw, is more than living up to the fact that it tops all the standard "best anime" lists - it's phenomenal), and got to the end of a disc. Tom was nosing through the menus, and found the section of previews. And there was one for Berserk. AND HE PLAYED IT GOOD GOD DOES HE REALISE WHAT THAT DOES TO MY HEART. My emotions had already been knotted and unknotted and flung out around the moon by Kenshin (we're nearing the climax of a maaajor story arc), and then I'm bombarded with clips from the Berserk anime, and Gatts is all young, and Griffith looks so beautiful and majestic, and Caska--- and then shots of the Eclipse and Gatts and--- and "Forces" was playing (come on, download it already!) and I was cliiiiinging to Tom's arm. The video seemed to last forever, and my heart was so exhausted afterwards. That series, just... it destroys you. In wonderful, heartwrenching ways. Good God.

So, yes, I have the soundtrack again, I flung it onto my usb drive and once Windows was booted, copied it and a few other things onto the Windows partition of my F drive. (This sort of thing is going to get tiresome quickly, I think, as I spend all my time in Linux, except when I need to use Photoshop, which is when I'll need access to pictures and music to listen to. I'll get a larger harddrive before long, to replace my current 40gb c:\ drive, and then I can just fling everything onto there for both OSes to read.) And I found the lyrics to "Forces", since it's one of those songs that your heart just demands you sing along to, and I had no idea what the lyrics were, apart from the refrain of "Hai Yai, Forces!". uh. So, I'm learning, and there's a karaoke version of the song that came along with the single, so that's a nice test for me. Still have to look at the lyrics to sing along nearly all of it, and the pacing is really bizarre in places, but y'know. It's just one of those songs that's so cathartic to sing along with. (This week should wreak some major havoc on my last.fm, what with not having most of my music collection accessible, and with leaving anime soundtracks and some Sigur Ros looping all the time I've been in Photoshop.) Also, having read the translation... holy freaking crap. It's fantastic, and, just, evokes and releases so much of the heartache the thought of the characters brings, and, just... it's perfect. (Though, with the translator's notes at the bottom, I'm curious as anything to know what's so odd about the wording of it, if it's just older forms of speaking, or..?)

Alright, I'm hungry, time for some food, then starting the smoothie things (something needs to chill a few hours it appears), and settling back into Photoshop to make a new Berserk desktop. :9 (And yes, I'll get around to updating DS again before terribly long, I do have a handful of things to get on there.)

 
I had a small handful of things I wanted to do with my day off, and here it is 2:30 and I've only just--- no I haven't even got that working right! arg. I'm trying to find a way to rip cds into mp3 format. This seems like such a simple task, but, no. I found a way to add in mp3 encoding the Ubuntu's preferred cd ripping program, but, on trying to play things back in Amarok, all I get is staticy blips. aaaaaarg. Having tried about five different things, I'm currently toying with switching to Banshee instead of Amarok (since I've found that, like others, the tree directory setup of Amarok was not going to work for me once I get all my music in there - I need to be able to sort by artist or whatever I want, like iTunes). I think I've got all the random plugins (the good, the bad, and the ugly - literally, that's how they're classified around here) this thing could possibly want, and it lists mp3 as an option for cd ripping now.. and hey! yay! it's playing my cd! That's much better than where I started out. Alright. Letting Banshee try to import it now.

While that's going, more interesting news:
EMI is letting all their music be DRM FREE ONLINE EEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *dances* Thank freaking goodness. Steve Jobs has actually been poking at all the major record labels to stop using their DRMs, because, as he voiced the rather obvious point, what the hell good does it do to prevent people from bouncing their digital files around wherever, when you have no restrictions on the 90% of what you're selling - cds. (Things downloaded through iTunes, of course, have their own restrictions.. but they are fairly generous, and I'm wondering if they're not going to be scrapped anyway themselves.) On a related note, there are talks in progress, and more than a few blatant hints that, the Beatles' music will soon be available online, finally.

okYAY! Banshee will rip my cds to mp3 and play them and granted it crashed when it finished the cd, but maybe that won't happen the second time. *crosses fingers* Let's make sure it's sending info to last.fm alright... damn, I don't think it's working. Time to poke at that...
The program's not as sleek as Amarok, which is nowhere near as clean as iTunes, but, the file access is better, so we'll see. Anyway, I'm not going to do serious re-building of my music stash until I decide what I'm doing about a second harddrive.. if I'm going to change the format of my C drive, if I'm going to force Ubuntu to read another ntfs drive, or if I'm just going to spend like $50 to get something larger than a 40gb drive in there. (Because, really, a 40gb drive is so five years ago. ;p) I did get my federal tax refund today, WOO! $400 and some odd, because I make like no money. So that's very exciting, especially given that my checking account has fallen below $100, thanks to paying rent. bah. I'm feeling much more comfortable now. Half that is going right into savings, so I have a bit more cushion in case of some random doom, the other half is.. well, going toward my store credit at work (which I always forget to bring in a check for, so it's piled up a little), and upgrading Lawrence. I've toyed with the idea of a new digital camera, but a) I haven't quite given up on mine yet b) Tom's letting me use his c) it's nice out now so I can break out the good ol' SLR and d) good lord it'll take me like a year to decide on something. Also thought about finally getting a midi keyboard - music composition is so ass-backwards trying to input notes via mouse or keyboard, but, I think I'm going to hold off on that a bit as well, just because I have no real idea of what I'd be looking for. And, really, getting Lawrence a little more up-to-date is a bit more pressing.

Once I get this last.fm thing sorted out on Banshee (or give up for the time being), I'm getting away from my freaking computer awhile, it's all sunny out and I have more productive things to be doing. Hmm...