Painting

Artpad.art.com is a neat website where you can make a painting, and it remembers every brush stroke you make (less the stuff you did right before you hit the 'undo' option). At any time during the painting process, you can have it replay what you've done so far. When you're happy with the end result, you can save your painting and it will give you a link so you can show other people what you've done, and there's a whole gallery full of people's paintings.

I drew the Shire:

http://artpad.art.com/?kkfkn623a9g

It's really neat replaying how other people drew their paintings. It's kind of like free art lessons!

One Year

Well, it's Melawe's birthday today - I created her one year ago. I decided to check her /played time, and the results are: 2 months 1 week 15 hours 26 minutes 27 seconds.

That makes up 18.8% of my last year.

I am resolving to get outside a lot more this summer. Between the hiking I plan to do and the garden I plan to maintain, it should be reasonably easy to make this goal. I did these things last year too, but this year will feature both a bigger garden and a bigger hike.

Garden Update

Well, the garden is done being built (although the irrigation still needs to be finished), and I've planted everything that can be planted so far (some things need warmer soil, others are going over top the irrigation, and I ran out of some seeds already). I've read a little about companion planting, which is where you plant something near something else, and one plant will benefit the other, either by repelling certain insects or changing the soil in a beneficial way. There is of course a flip-side to this, in that some plants are basically enemies - they pose a threat to each other. For instance, you're not supposed to plant potatoes and tomatoes too close to each other, and there are plenty of plants that can't go near beans because beans add a lot of nitrogen to the soil - too much for some plants to handle.

While I was figuring all this out and planting what I could plant, the boys have been building a shed:



Gosh I hope I don't kill this garden...

To Defend and Uphold

Over the past month or so, the leader of my kin in LotRO has produced a short movie about our kin, using game footage and a combination of music from the game and music by David Arkenstone. The video is called To Defend and Uphold and is available for download here. He put a lot of work into making this video, and I am super proud of him, because the end product is very well done. I am also proud to have worked alongside the group of wonderful people who participated in its making.

From the perspective of one the actresses in the film, I can say that it was pretty neat to be a part of such a process. Some shots in the film took scarcely more than a minute of screen time but took well over an hour to capture. There are many reasons for this. Sometimes we had to wait for the appropriate time of day in-game (because there is a day/night cycle in this game) in order to get the film sequence to look right, or to show a sense of time passing. Other times, some npc or other would wander into the middle of a scene, or add a line or two of his/her own. Another issue we had (that wasn't too difficult to work around) is that we couldn't always coordinate via voice because some players weren't equipped to do so, so it was a little tricky sometimes to cue actors in a timely fashion, so re-takes were sometimes necessary. Of course, there were also times where we had to choreograph several actions simultaneously, such as for the fight scenes. Sometimes also we had to redo things to fit all of us into the shot.

All in all, it was a pretty fun experience, working alongside my friends to help produce something high quality and entertaining to watch. For some scenes, we had passersby watching with amusement and/or curiosity, because a lot of what we were doing was role-playing rather than game-playing. There were several times when we'd be taking and re-taking shots, or standing around apparently idly (all in the same outfit), and once in a while, one of us would randomly move over, or reposition ourselves somehow, but behind the scenes, we were working out how to stand, who would say what when and how we'd be cuing people, and discussing various other ideas for how things ought to go. There were some very interesting role-play scenes going on (where some of our characters would be acting parts of non-Guardsmen), that we might do a few times over, in which case I think people could probably gather what we were doing. It was probably also interesting to watch as we'd be doing something in uniform and one guy without an outfit would be wandering around facing us, strafing side to side or some other peculiar action (that'd be our cameraman). Or we'd be acting out a scene over and over, each time with the cameraman standing in a different spot.

We had our fair share of outtakes too, which were hilarious for those involved. We may put on a serious front sometimes, but behind the scenes we are often fooling around and laughing. I had a lot of fun participating in this project, and I hope you enjoy the show!

Garden Project Day 10

Today I arrived home from work to see the boys busily working on that brick wall. They've gotten quite a lot done! (By the way, this really is Day 10 - I couldn't document day 9 because the boys had covered up their work due to the threat of rain, so I didn't get to see anything). They didn't notice me documenting their hard work in progress:



It's so exciting to see it all starting to come together. Look at the difference in soil quality, too - I can't really get over the stark contrast. Soon to come for this little garden: irrigation, arbours, barrels, trellises, dividers, pots, shelves, and quite possibly solar LED pathway lights. Oh, and plants. We can start planting in a couple more weeks. I'm looking forward to getting some crops in!

Also, a little side note: those drywall mud buckets are so handy. If you ever do a drywall project, keep the buckets. They make decent stepping stools, they are good concrete molds, they are good for mixing mortar in, and they are pretty decent storage containers for tools and supplies as well.

A quick note on counting

I must not be eating enough junk food, because my chocolate bar took me by surprise today. How do they get away with calling it a '3 Musketeers' when there are only two musketeers in there?

Interesting note: it says on the package, "35% less fat than the average leading chocolate brands." Well, yeah. Put Aramis back in there and let's see where we're at.

Garden Project Day 8

Sadly, I had to return to work today, so Day 8 featured only the boys working on this, but they got a lot done:




Now that the one side is complete, they have started filling it up with soil, so you can really see it coming together. Only a few more weeks until planting time!

Garden Project Day 7

Day 7 was a day of brick-laying. Progress:

Garden Project Day 6

I had to take pictures this morning of Day 6's progress, since the boys were working into the night on this one. Day 6 was all about preparing the area for the brick work, and some actual brick laying too. Before that, though, we had to prepare the beds for the bricks, by digging a small trench and then filling up the trench to the right height with sand. We also had to prepare the irrigation system enough so that we could lay bricks over top of it:



The boys laid out all those bricks in the dark in a crazy wind storm:



When we were pouring the concrete, we had extra concrete that we put to use by making stepping stones. We poured the leftover concrete into some old drywall mud pails we had, and on Day 6 they were set, so we removed them from the buckets:



Onward to Day 7...

Garden Project Day 5

Secksy.

Garden Project Day 4

Well, here's another day come and gone - Day 4. We got another load of dirt bright and early in the morning, and I had to move the whole pile out of the way - and there was already a pile of dirt in the most convenient spot to relocate it, so I really had my work cut out for me. Here's our progress for the day:



Here's a closer-up shot of all that dirt. My arms hurt every time I look at this picture. Oh well, at least I'm totally beefy now (hahahaha). My only reprieve from the dirt work today was the torture session... err, dentist appointment, I had (which I totally forgot about until they phoned me, wondering where I was). By the way, that's 6 cubic yards of dirt there - 3 from yesterday and 3 more from today. We may yet get more, too...



Here's a close-up of the windy path, with the forms all ready to go.



I'd write more, but my arms have had enough for one day. The pictures are each worth 1000 words though, right? So I hope you enjoyed my 3000+ word post!