Frustration

After a long time, I finally managed to get a music player up and running on my blog. It was bad enough finding a good player, since I can't write Java worth crap, and C++ isn't suitable. Sourcing a proper web host was also a giant problem. All of them seemed to be run on Apache server machines, which effectively prevented any attempt to link out from their servers.

Finally I found a good place. Yay.

And the player's somewhat cut off.

Anyway, I'm thinking of changing my blogskin. I already got a header. A new one XD It will look pretty kewl.

I'll put it up later. It doesn't really match the color scheme so I'm phasing the whole template out as it were.

Recent Stuff

Been having problems with some of my programs lately. I completely reformatted my drive because I was switching over to one twice the capacity of mine. As a result, beforehand I had to backup each and every single program to an ISO image. Some of them didn't seem to make it afterwards though. I couldn't run Counter Strike - Condition Zero for some reason. The rest APPEAR to be fine for now.

I bought 1GB of RAM today. Stupid ripoffs, it was selling for $105 in one shop, but it went out of stock. The next cheapest was $119 in another store! A price difference of $14... Man, now there's my red packet money + a considerable sum of my remaining savings gone.

I'm still pretty happy over the purchase though. Fitted my motherboard out with it, and zip! Damn, was it fast! Battle for Middle-Earth 2 doesn't lag the slightest at all on highest settings now, and even Oblivion rarely encounters slowdowns now, despite my high settings and the ungodly amount of modifications I forced on it.

Well well well, what a weekend.

Trendwhores

Yes. I'm talking about you, stupid fool. The one who has the ego the size of a planet, and an attitude to match.

First off, what gives you the right to define what "cool" or "nerd", or any other of these slang words mean? It's almost as though you own Urban Dictionary! "cool" doesn't mean MCR, Shakira, or otherwise "b@nds 1 h@pp3n 2 lyk3", it merely is a reference to an entity, whether it be an object, activity or pop idol, which is generally considered to be part of a trend by the majority of young people. It has nothing to do with what you like; get that stupid foolish thought out of your head. What you like has nuts to do with what's known as "cool".

Similarly, you can't just go ahead and label someone "nerd" as you like, because it's a bloody stereotype. Lumping people together in groups without considering each individual's merit is an extremely fallacious and dangerous thing to do. You may think someone's a nerd, and proclaim it if you want. I'll defend to the death your right to say it. But freedom of speech is NOT EQUAL TO FREEDOM OF INTENTIONAL IDIOCY AND STUPIDITY.

I reiterate.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH
||
---
||
FREEDOM OF INTENTIONAL
IDIOCY AND STUPIDITY

That means, despite being able to speak your mind, if you say something INCREDIBLY STUPID, then be prepared to be flamed all the way to Hell and back on a two-way train ticket.

For some reason, I'm going off on a tangent on freedom of speech, so I'll try to move back.

Hence. I don't have to take your bullshit from you. You call me a nerd, fine. I admit the amount of time I spend in front of the computer could be considered to be more than average. But you're completely ignoring the fact that I could possibly have other hobbies that are completely unrelated to computers at all. For example, I'm particularly interested in music, linguistics and design, and plan to pursue these courses the first chance I get in university. And yet, you continuously disclaim what I say, as though your word is absolute.

... And the trendwhore addressed the awed onlookers, and proclaimed "Hence shall my word on trends, nerds, bands, idols and the like be absolute, for thou art not worthy. Hear me! For those faithful followers of the trendwhore such as thine shalt receiveth the glory and power due thee. Condemned forever be those that oppose us, and damn them!" And the crowd cheered.

A weak ending, somewhat. But I'll try harder next time.

V-Day

Saint Valentine's Day in full.

Yes well, I'm getting something regardless of the fact that I'm not giving anyone anything for romantic purposes. It's the closest thing to IFD on August 5th this year. I doubt I'll have that amount of time and energy to buy something during August, seeing as it's the O' Levels. So I'm spending a third of my entire savings to buy presents for a specific 8 people.

A whopping fifty dollars. Okay, not entirely, the Jell-O change girl gave me 45 cents as change. I guess it's hard to total up gifts that match fifty dollars exactly.

Meh, I'm tired. Not much energy today. And yay, my "Hello World" works perfect.

Nevermind if you can't understand what I'm talking about now. It's supposed to be random. Well, almost.

The Phoenix

Well, my latest piece, as promised.


Statistics:

Time: 5 hours
Number of Layers: 12
Technique: Brushing and smudging like hell
Colorisation: Painted general colors atop, gaussian blurred, then blended


If you've got a devART account, do go have a look ;)

"Atheistic, Immoral Scum!"

I swear, some people do the most stupid things.

The below Wall of Text may be mildly offensive. I have no idea why it would be, other than the fact that it touches on religion. However I must make one thing clear:

I AM NOT AGAINST RELIGION, NOT NOW, NOT LATER, NOT EVER. I AM MERELY SICK OF THE PEOPLE WHO FIND IT FUNNY TO KEEP CONDEMNING ME TO HELL ONCE EVERY TWO DAYS. I DO NOT DISLIKE THEIR RELIGION, ONLY THE WAY THEY PRESENT IT.

With that. Let's go:

Oh wait, you can't see it? Oh I'm sorry. Just highlight it there. Right below this sentence.

For goodness' sake, I already said I'm perfectly contented with my life. I do not need you to tell me whether I'm going to Hell after this life or not, because I can form my own opinions on that. If you think I am, fine by me, I don't care what you think, but if you think shoving that stuff down my throat is acceptable then you're wrong.

Before anyone jumps down my throat, no, I am not discriminating against religion. Religion isn't bad in my book, simply because it has a wonderfully calming effect on people. It teaches people how to lead their lives properly and in fact has done a fair bit for the world. Moral values, valuable anecdotes and insightful stories can be found in their holy books, for example the Bible. Some of my best friends are religious; I really do not see the point in dissing their faith since it would serve no use at all.

But hell, that does not mean you can start shoving your religion down my throat. Introducing it to me is fine. Yes. Telling me about your religion is fine. Breathe, yes. Even asking me to convert, I'll feel a little awkward, but yes, you can talk to me about it. I've had perfectly civil conversations on religion with religious people, and we always part on a friendly note.

However, when I politely refuse, you sure as hell cannot jump up and down and scream like a monkey, "BURN IN HELL FOR ETERNITY!!!!11 YAAARGH!!!!!!1111one" I've grown sick of your "You nasty, sick, immoral, atheistic scum of the earth!!!!!1111oneone" bullshit. I'm choosing to stay in this frame of mind, simply because you're keeping it closed. Your incredibly childish and immature acts don't reflect well on the religion you belong to.

If you want to talk to me, you jolly well better act your age and stop your bullshit. Why not start presenting your words in a more polite tone, rather than yammering out your discontentment? If you could lessen your "!"s tenfold, and run your posts through even the most basic spell checker, for example the one in Microsoft Word or Firefox, then you'd be a far more attractive conversationist, would you not?

Aha, I see your pretty head nodding up and down with sudden understanding. Yes. Now go clean your act up.



That being said. Yes. Let's talk about other things.

Finally I developed another bit of technique for painting. I hope to have the latest piece up on deviantART by tomorrow. I'll keep everyone posted ;)

Study

I've tried to do water this time.

No, really.

Admittedly this was with very close reference to a photograph. If you ask me to paint something like this without a reference source I'd be stumped. However noting the play of light and shadows on the waves is very interesting.

A fairly good case study I must say.



There we go now. A lot of smudging and brushwork for this one. It was done with a fairly large brush except for the white foam.

Nasty, nasty weather.

Now, barely a day after recovering from that stupid sore throat, I got ANOTHER infection: probably influenza or something similar. Sounds pretty horrible. Oh well, that's me.

Anyways, I went home, was bored, so I worked on a header meant for a blog I promised a friend. One or two hour's work produced this:



Pretty rough work, but that's the best I can do right now. I'm finding it hard to think about anything other than sleep anyways.

Do comment on the picture, it's still rough work anyway.

And if you steal this, like what happened before, you'll pay through your nose for it. I have the original file in twice as high a resolution as this, so.





Time for dinner.

50 hours without sleep.

Woot, now, isn't that fantastic? Today I was so frigging tired at school that I had a nasty headache, complete reduction of my vision to a faint blur (resulting in me not being able to read a single bloody word I write on a piece of paper).

I don't know, maybe it's a good thing. I want to get some hallucinations and see how fun they are.

Well anyway, screw that.

The birthday presents were pretty good and I liked them a lot. Even though there's ONE that I can't really see myself using in the long-term future, (hint: jas/maureen) but still it's the thought that counts ;)

And anyway jas spends too much money on presents. No wonder she went with a low budget one, which I can understand. Opening the present was hell though. I believe there were 13 layers of newspapers fully wrapped around the whole thing.

Gods, and everybody was sniggering while I was WTFing at the seemingly endless layers.

That was on Friday.

Today I got another set of presents too. Woot.


Now, if you will excuse me, I need to go tape my eyes shut so they won't try to keep me awake from the heavy dose of caffeine.

A fantastic day to get sick on. I got a nasty high fever on Friday, and so I did not have anything good to eat for my birthday on Saturday. But then again, I did manage to have some dessert, so it wasn't entirely a fruitless birthday.

The cause of it all turned out to be a stubborn sore throat, though I really doubt the doctor's diagnosis. I don't know, when the doctor actually asked if I'm taking any other medication, and I replied with the names of them, he apparently didn't know what they were.

Take out prescription pad.
Write.
Scribble off.
Say, "Umm..."
Write again.
Scribble off.
Say, "Ok."
Wrote first few letters of the name of my other medication.

I'm going to fricassee his intestines if he diagnosed me wrongly.

Thanks a bunch to all those who actually remembered my birthday.

Mmm

Hooray, hooray, it's a happy, happy day.



Then again, maybe not. It was pretty ordinary today. I made some headway in the conceptualizing of Ami's blog, since he asked me like, close to a week ago. <_< Looks like I'm procrastinating again, no? I promise, I'll do my best! Really.

I also started painting some white fluffy clouds today too. They were bullshit to be honest, but I was still experimenting with techniques. And I don't even know if I've gotten the style down right.

And goddammit, my bloody tablet is acting up again. When I move the tablet pen over it the central portion, the cursor instantly skids a quarter way across the screen, meaning I can't paint a single thing in the center. I may have to work without my tablet for a while then. Which means slow production. It won't be "Best Quality" <_<

Like that nasty crab that June Woo got from Suyuan in Joy Luck Club.