The Pencil Is Iconic with the Sword

Well, since the semester ended, I have had time to do a few things, like work on my icon for this blog.  I have made a second model icon to try out for this page.  If it doesn't show up at the start, it will appear below as well.  For comparison's sake, I have also included my previous attempt at an icon.  I used the Pages drawing tool to get a sharp angle at the bottom.  I also redesigned the so it would look more like a broadsword.  Pay particular attention to the gleam in the sapphire in the hilt.  I found how to get more points on the star, so it would look more authentic.  I kept the background as white, partially because I forgot how to change it.  Besides, I think this looks a little better this way.

 One thing I did forget to do was add a border around the second icon.  In hindsight, I really should have done that.  Until the words wrap around the image, no one can tell just where the icon ends.  The main problem with this attempt is the "T" in the sword.  It is way too thin.  It should be a little thicker, maybe one size more.  I really like how the sword also mimics a pencil now.  Totally non-intentional, honest.  I just hope that Facebook starts picking up at least one of these images a the design for the link.  For some reason, it has started to pick up an image back from February as the link image.  Unfortunately, it is a rather dorky one of me wearing my newest pair of jeans.  The sort of brown ones that I got on sale for $10.  You got to admit, when you find a pair of Levi's for that cost, and they fit with almost no need for altering, you have to buy them.  Even if they are not in the best of colors.  Still, I have a wide range of shirts that I can wear with them, in both long- and short-sleeves.  I literally have shirts in every color. I'm kind of a clothes hog when it comes to shirts.  And socks.  But that is another topic.  If this new icon doesn't work, I will probably have to break down and get an art app.  So, if anyone out there has any suggestions, send them to me.

I Second That Semester

Yesterday, I turned in my last assignment for grad school, which I hope will finish my work for this semester.  I'll explain shortly.  I only took two classes this time around.  I should have taken three, but I just barely made it through last semester taking three.  Although, each one was a literary criticism course.  This time, neither course was literary.  The first was syntax, the science of language.  The majority of my time was spent making diagrams of fairly simple sentences.  These were not the type of diagrams we once did in grade and high school.  Or college if you took a linguistics class.  No, these were much more thorough and complicated.  Every word took at least two lines and multiple descriptors just to get done.  While the actual reading for class was a manageable half hour or so a week, it would take an hour just to get the diagramming done for one of the harder sentences once every detail was introduced.  By contrast, it took me about six hours minimum for each of my classes' reading material last semester per week, plus another hour or two to do the lessons related to that material.  Things would have been easier if I could have written the diagrams down on paper so I could turn them in, but I couldn't because it was an online class.  That would have cut my work time by half.  As it was, I had to figure out how to use the simple graphic features of my MacBook's word processing program, Pages, without any training or manual to help me out.  It was a very sharp learning curve, especially when I started to use the more complicated details in my diagrams.  Things could have been made easier if I had found the freehand drawing tool before I was finishing up on my final paper.  Seriously, it would have made things so much easier if I had found it sooner.  It might help me out with my icon, once I get back around to it.  My other class was a fiction writers' workshop.  I had to read a chapter from a book, then take a one hour open book test over what I had read.  That should have been one a week, but there was a month long gap where there weren't any chapters.  I also had to submit two short works of non-genre fiction, then respond to the stories of everyone else in class.  That amounted to fourteen other stories I wound up reading.  So many of them were depressing, and even violent at times.  By comparison, my stories were rather simple and connected.  In fact, they were the start of a second book I had been thinking about.  Look at my literary blog, The T. H. Weingarten Miscellany, for those.  The strange thing is that I don't think I had to turn in any revised works.  I just took everyone else's ideas and work with them on my own schedule, and possibly never do anything else with the stories again.  I will, but not for this class.  As least I don't think so, and I have yet to find anywhere on the site where I could do that anyway.  So, the semester is over.  I won't know for a while when, or where, I will take more classes.  I am on a conditional status that might not allow me to take any more courses until it gets resolved.  Also, there are two summer courses, Modern Drama and a Poetry Workshop, that I could take if I get the chance. As to fall, I might have some different plans.  More on that later.

I Think Icon, I Think Icon

What you see above is an early draft of what I hope will become the icon for his blog.  Let me tell you about it.  When I first started this blog, I didn't own a computer.  I had to use the computers at public libraries for all my blogging purposes.  I was therefore limited in my time online.  My original blogs were limited by the twenty or so minutes that I could spare after work or on special trips, while still dealing with other online duties.  This is one of the main reasons why many of the features of this blog have not been fully used, such as ads.  Even after I finally got a computer last year, I still had trouble setting up some features.  For instance, I need to verify my blog via a text message or phone call.  Since I still don't have smart phone (I'm working on it) and I can't always use the weak wi-fi at work to use my work number, the one I use for most of my computer needs, this has been hard.  Another problem has been in creating my blog's icon.  My Mac does not come with an art app installed.  No Macs do anymore.  I have yet to find a free one with good reviews and the type of features I might need.  Still, for this early version, the graphics portion of Pages, Apple's word processing app, worked just fine.  Note how I incorporated my initials into the downward facing sword, which also vaguely looks like a pen or pencil.  I would have already put it into my blog, except for one problem.  It doesn't fit.  Although I have a square frame around the pic and I used an apparently square aperture to take the screenshot of the logo, Blogger doesn't think the pic is square enough.  In fact, it is approximately a pixel or so off from a perfect square, just enough to make it unacceptable.  I probably won't be able to do any better until I get used to the recently added Screenshot app, or I get a graphics app that can get a perfectly square image of a size that Blogger finds acceptable.  The final logo might have the sword piercing something, as well as being more swordlike, pointier you know.  Anyway, tell me what you think of this early draft.  While I admit it was just a few minutes of messing around, it shows off just what I want to do.

How Darkness Brought Me Back into the Light

Back in 1996, I was a wreck, mostly due to the panic attack and realizations that I suffered soon after my birthday that year.  I was so bad off.  I barely did anything.  By that summer, I was starting to make changes.  One of those, as I have mentioned in earlier posts, would be weightlifting.  I know, it was a radical change for me, but it has improved both my health and my mode ever since.  Another change was getting into role-playing games.  While I never did join up with any others to actually play with, I still enjoyed learning how and imagining myself as a designer for such a world.  My primary interest was in the World of Darkness lines from the original While Wolf studios.  I knew much about them from gaming magazines, as well as the very short-lived television series Kindred: the Embraced that was based off of one of their lines.  Well, there were some other outlets of information that I won't go into.  That September, I decided to actually get into the games by buying the first core book.  The store was out of stock, but they did have the fairly recently released historical game line core booklet.  It had the same basic rules set, just set in the Dark Ages instead of modern times.  I got it, and I was hooked.  Sure, I really wasn't interested in history, but just knowing about the world was enough to brighten my world, so to speak.  A few days later, I purchased the companion book, which expanded on the material covered in the core and allowed for more possibilities in game play and function.  A month later, on Halloween, I finally got the actual modern setting core book.  I then went back to the store later that day to pick up the player's guide.  I just had to have it.  I would wind up getting the other core books a quickly as I could, getting supplements that caught my eye.  I was even getting new products, sometimes as soon as they came out.  I was ordering them from my local shop, as well as searching them out at other stores whenever I could.  I passed over a few, that in hindsight I wish I had gotten.  One of the reasons why I chose/forced to open a book store was so I could get these books directly, without having to worry about having my local shop missing my order.  Turns out, the store's primary distributor didn't carry that company, but I still would get some through our secondary distributor.  In 2003, I lost well love half of my collection, as well as so many other things, to a flood.  Two months later, I found out the company was ending the current games and replacing them with new lines, ones where a definitive ending wasn't so guaranteed.  That meant not only that I had lost so much, but there would be no way for me to ever easily get them back.  I managed to replace a dozen or so immediately, mostly core books, and a few more in the decades since.  I got much of the new games as they came out, a mix of from the local game store and well as my own (our new primary distributor was carrying the books).  While I liked them, I never got into them as much as I did the originals.  Things changed in 2010.  The company changed its business model, part of the numerous corporate shake-ups it was experiencing.  It was going to a print-on-demand/download model.  Since I didn't have a computer or a credit card at the time, this meant I was our of luck getting their new books.  I even missed out on getting the one last book that I really wanted for my collection.  My distributors never got it in when I was placing orders.  This led to another minor panic attack, nowhere near the big one or the one I had when I realized the original lines were ending.  I would keep track over the years, finding out about new products, while occasionally working on my own games, trying to perfect them enough to warrant trying to see if they could be good enough to join theirs.  Corporate conditions kept changing, as properties and companies changed hands.  Books were still being online only, but a new company now owned the intellectual property, while another company founded by the original crew made new books, both for the new games but the originals as well, as special "anniversary" style products featuring both old and revised/new information.  Almost the entirety of the old books were also available again in this format.  As I mentioned in the last post, everything game together for me to finally purchase the six core rule books as PDF downloads, at a price less than getting just one of them as a POD hardcover.  I still would prefer physical copies, as well as some of the other new/updated books, but they can come later.  I am still pouring over the details in the books, but the old joy is returning.  Having these games as an interest helped bring me out of the funk as was in, at least enough so I could continue living, if not fully back into the world.  Connecting online would be the start of that, but this has helped me become who I am now, a person I much prefer to how I was back then,

Let the Games Begin Once Again

As long time readers might remember, I mentioned a long time ago that one of the reasons why I opened my book store, Booknotes, was so I could more directly get some of my favorite role-playing supplies, since my local store sometimes had problems getting them.  Usually, it wasn't bad, although they once went an entire year without ordering my products, and this was after I opened my store.  Fooled me though, as my primary distributor didn't even carry the game lines.  A second one did, and I frequently went through them to purchase older products.  I did order six new products at once, just before they were able to be sold, but as long as I didn't actually display them or let anyone know I had them, it was okay.  They might not have had a hard on-sale date anyway.  Tragedy struck twice when over 75% of my collection was destroyed in a flood in 2003, followed soon after with the announcement that the game lines were ending next year, to be replaced with updated version featuring a tweaked game system.  I wasn't able to replace most of those books, and the ending would mean that I would never get any more.  I would go on to purchase many products in the new lines.  Strangely enough, they would be carried by our new primary distributor that we were had to switch over to for various reasons.  Again, I would occasionally miss a product, either through them or my local store.  Then came the news, about 2009, that the company was shifted its business model.  It was moving away from direct sales to print-on-demand or downloads only.  I was out of luck, since I didn't have a computer or a way to pay for them online.  While I would still buy the occasional older title whenever I could find one, I hadn't gotten a new product since then.  Even when almost the entire  original books became available online, along with new updated products, I was never able to get them.  I pretty much gave up on the updated systems because of this.  Well, last year, I finally got a computer.  Soon after, I was able to set up a way to buy online.  This past week, the PDF versions of some of the core products went on sale at 75% off.  Almost against my better judgement, I splurged and got the six title on sale, even though I technically didn't have the money to waste.  It was worth it.  I got the six titles combined for less than the cost of getting one of them as a print-on-demand hardcover.  Sure, I will still want to get the actual physical books one day, but this was too good a chance to pass up.  I would have liked to get more title, but I wanted to start out slow, and most of the other titles weren't on as good of a sale.  Now, I only need to actually play.  That's right, I have never played with the systems with others.  Not once in the twenty+ years that I have been involved with them.  While I have even fancied the idea of trying to work with them, and I even posted some of my ideas here for one game, I never have played.  Such a lost.  I am not even halfway looking through all six title yet.  I only downloaded them a little over twelve hours ago.  Each of these books is over 400 pages long!  I barely have gotten through the first three with brief looks, as of yet.  Here's to me for finally coming back to the things that helped me get through my worst years.

I Better Work

I am currently looking for a new job, technically. There is a really good chance that I will be out of work in a few weeks.  Considering that I am self-employed, you can take a guess at what that will mean.  The problem is that I never really figured out what I would like to do for a living.  I am going back to graduate school to get my Masters, but most of the things I think I would like to do, I would need the degree first.  I am at least a year away, possibly more.  So, I am hoping to find something else to do in the interim.  I just don't know what that would be.  You see, I did have some sort of plan growing up about what I would want to do for a living.  Unfortunately, I never got to pursue any of my dreams due to reasons I have gone over in previous posts.  There was actually a chance I could have become some sort of chemical engineer, or something similar, if I had just been able to take the right class when I started college, instead of trusting my advisor to take what turned out to be a remedial class that I didn't need.  I was seriously thinking about going into journalism (by the way, while the consensus believes blogging to be a form of journalism, I do not), but I would up going to the one school in the state that had absolutely no outlet, program, or even a newspaper, at least during my time there.  I got a practically generic English degree, and it didn't even focus on the creative writing aspects that I love the most.  My one short-term job turned out to be a nightmare, one that I will not go into again here.  Sadly to say, it left me turned off for office and government work, pretty much the only outlets that people were considering me for.  That is my paradoxical problem.  I have a very logical brain.  I am great at puzzles and games.  It is the main theme of this blog after all.  Yet, I have the should of an artist.  I need to create and perform.  I just never was able to get the opportunities needed to craft these talents or show others what I could do with them.  Some would think I would have in law or medicine.  I might have the brains for such fields, but I never had the interest.  They just don't excite me in the ways that more creative fields do.  Sometimes, I feel that the universe is pushing me into government, an elected official.  I happen to know that I probably would be good at it, except for my shortcomings,  Unless I had the proper team of people around me, I would become a milquetoast who would follow along party lines just to get a crumb of my ideas through to help my constituents.  Or I would become an autocrat, a sort of beneficent dictator forcing my agenda through whether anyone liked it or not.  There's too much danger either way, so I wisely remove myself from such ventures.  I write.  That much I know I can do.  I just wish I could have tried my luck at acting or music.  There is a deep kneed in my heart that suggests that I could have been good at either.  I have a talent for art and design, one that I almost could pursue.  Almost, I doubt I could be great at either, even thought the natural talent is there.  I write, and that is it.  I read. I play games and work puzzles.  But I can't do anything, at this time, that I can make a living off of.  I write.  But does anyone read it?

Who Do You Think You Are Fooling

This Monday was April Fool's Day, the first one close to my regular posting time since I started this blog.  I have always liked the day, even though I rarely get any chances any more to actively participate in the tomfoolery.  My favorite part nowadays is all of the fake news stories that pop up all over the internet.  Sure, most are inconceivable, but quite a few of them are funny.  Take for instance Burger King's new all-pickle Whopper.  Yuck.  Some people actually wanted such a horrid idea to be true.  Theoretically, a burger could be ordered almost that exact way, but still.  McDonalds followed suit with a slightly more believable idea, milkshake dipping cups in four flavors.  This is to help satisfy all of the people who love to dip their fries into their milkshakes.  Never mind the unrealistic way to try and keep the product fresh (as well as cold, since I guess that is one of the qualities that people like in the dipping), many still thought this was real.  I have never tried it, as I have rarely ordered a milkshake anywhere, and I rarely eat at McDonalds either.  One of my most favorite ones was the as by a decidedly non-kid friendly website who was promoting a new beverage geared in replacing the body fluids lost during activities involving their site.  I only saw part of the ad, but I almost want to see it in its entirety.  Almost.  Now, an interesting side note.  Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man:  His Masquerade is one of the few major literary works to take place entirely on April Fool's Day, roughly mid-morning to midnight.  In it, a variety of riverboat passengers confront various figures who try to convince them into doing certain favors and/or giving them money.  Many go along with the figure, but some refuse to be taken in.  The general take on the book is that all of the figures are actually the same man (or perhaps the Devil himself!) in many disguises.  The end of the book hints at the possibility of further adventures that never arrived.  The book's failure was one of the reasons why Melville gave up writing fiction professionally for the last decades of his life.  The Confidence-Man was the last work of fiction published during his lifetime.  While he still wrote other things, such as poetry and non-fiction, he really only wrote fiction for himself or close friends and family.    Really sad, but let us end on a slightly happier note.  This Saturday, a television series returns to start its final season.  While sad, at least there will be about twenty-six last episodes before it goes off the air.