Monday, March 30, 2009

Homophones and Kanji... Yuck

Today I sat down at iKnow... it still wanted me to do 40... so I did.

I've got this nightmarish conundrum I'm trying to sort out.
If I'm saying them correctly...

締める - shimeru - tighten, fasten
閉める - shimeru - close
閉まる - shimaru - be closed
開く - hiraku - open

They're all so similar it's hard to come up with ways to memorize! ugh...

I've also got
きれい(kirei) - clean, pretty
嫌い - kirai - hated, disliked

single vowel differences are a pain for me.
You'd think it'd be easier... like clean v. clone in English... but nope.

Two notable things I learned...
六日 - muika - 6 days, 6th of month
六つ - muttsu - six (things)
I need to learn the whole list of these...

I learned this too.
晴れる - hareru - to be sunny(weather)
It's easy, because it sounds close to "haru", which is 春, spring (season


I've been a little slow at responding to answers... I need to work on focusing better.

My other interesting misc were:
直る - naoru - be repaired, return to normal
お姉さん - older sister (another form... i need to go look up lists and differences. I think this is formal)
辺 - hen - vicinity, area, part
易しい - yasashii - easy, simple


The sentence I'm studying for the day is this:
私はパンよりご飯が好きだ。
I prefer rice over bread (or the other way around, i can't remember)
I'm trying to figure out how comparisons work.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

More Practice... and Starting A Song!!!

Today I finally sat down and found something!!!

It's in the early stages i.e. 1 verse, opener & chorus, but it's good!

No spoiler, I don't like to show my work 'till I'm done, but I can say the focus chord is Dm.

I'm using Dm, Am, G, C, and A.

Dunno if there will be another in the bridge (not there yet) but it's good. i like it.
It's not all strumming, there's a bit of picking to it i may continue to modify and mess with.

I'm getting better with practice at guitar cardio. In case you haven't yet received my recommendation, it's a MUST for those that want to get good at guitar.

I have a link to the left.

I still need to name the song. That's in the works, too.

Water Drop Attempt

I haven't had time to figure out what I wanted...
It seems like the only good ways to do water are with a camera.

This is a piece of practice... I almost didn't show it. I am trying to learn to do cool water... this is comparatively lame.

It's not too bad, though. I'm learning, at least. The basics are layer styles. They are the easiest way to imitate water.

There are a large number of tutorials I've collected that I haven't had time to to that are worth a look.
Two significant ones are:
Water from a tap
Dark Rain - my favorite

These are out of 40 Tutorials I found a list of.

I hope to do SOMETHING april-themed... just dunno what.
NO EASTER EGGS. Sorry. I'm putting my foot down.

What do you think I should do? I'm saving flowers for spring.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

iKnow I'm Falling Behind...

Well, iknow yelled at me tonight for falling behind - it wanted me to do like, 50 of them!
Fat chance. It's late and i've got to get to bed.
I did 30, and only two words in each were new, some of them dumb numbers/weekdays still.

Today I will forbear a list, as there's little new anyway.

Here's the interesting stuff.

こっち(kocchi) - here
(i need to look up the "there" equivalent...)

開く - hiraku - open

つける(tsukuru) - switch on (to go with kesu- 消す - switch off !)

乾く - kawaku - be thirsty
二つ - futatsu - two things

Here's some I pulled from the example sentences.
The first was from "God, spirit" and other was from "why"
信じる - shinjiru - to believe/trust/have faith (in) (religious word)
泣く - naku - to cry
Tomar v. Tomaru
I have a language confusion I'm trying to sort out.
In español, to take, consume (like medicine) is "tomar"
In 日本語, to stay (overnight) (i.e. in a hotel) is "tomaru"

It makes memorizing 泊まる (tomaru) a pain.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Practice and Improvement

Today I did a lot of work on my guitar. I played a little GH, but nothing mentionable.

I didn't create much, but I played all I know.
I got Hey There, Delilah back in shape.
It's a good song.

My fingers are killing me right now, particularly the ones on my left hand.

I'm getting better, but I need to keep going. I feel like I've almost slacked off.
I think I might head off to Guitar Cardio to do some exercises.

That should help.

I just had a thought recently... Eliza's older sister Abi is getting married this summer.
I'll be there.
I bet I'm going to be asked to play her a song... I might have one written by then anyway.
Scary thought. I might actually have to play in front of a crowd. I've never done that!

Anyway, I'll keep chugging along.
Here's the awesome vid.

Struggling with Raindrops

Today I worked to come up with some kind of neat water/rain effect art in Photoshop.

That's what I wanted to discuss today...
Unfortunately, I failed miserably.

I did a few, but it's not what I want.

So I've decided there'll be a take-two on this. I'll show you some once i've had success.

Making a cheap water drop style in photoshop is easy, though.
If you draw something on a layer, and turn the fill to 0% instead of the opacity, only the layer style will show through. Do that, and use inner shadow, outer shadow, and bevel&emboss correctly, and water is actually very straightforward.

I will be more particular on the particulars, so to speak, once I get something productive finished.

Until then, I'll have to drown in clover... I really want to do a "rain" art piece, for April, though.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Going on to Grade 2... And Multitasking

Actually, I have two cases of multitasking.
One happened, and the other is a long term plan.

Tonight I watched TV for a few hours, and during that time I had my 日本語 out on my lap.

I decided to write out the grade 2 kanji. It's helped me tremendously already.
As laborious as writing them can be, it allows me to see them in my mind.

That's necessary if I'm ever going to be able to write Japanese - also, it improves recognition dramatically.

The second case is my long-term plan. I plan to sit down and work at Smart.fm / iKnow as weel as writing. After I get done with grade 2, I'll probably write the iKnow vocab Kanji.

My vocabulary should begin to increase considerably.
That's provided I don't give up and slack off...

If you're curious, I just did the first 16.
They're:

引く - hi(ku) - (to) pull, draw
羽 - ha; hane - counter for birds&rabbits; wing, blade, feather
雲 - cumo - cloud
園 - en,sono - suffix for place, farm, garden, park
遠い - too(i) - far, distant
何 - nan, nani - what
科 - ka - dept., section, family (taxonomy)
夏 - natsu - summer
家 - ie/uchi - house/home
歌う - uta(u) -(to) sing
画 - kaku - stroke, element (of art, kanji, etc)
回 - kai - occurences, innings(baseball)
会う - a(u) - (to) meet
海 - umi - sea,beach
絵 - e - picture, drawing, painting, sketch
外 - soto - outside

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Moving on to Difficult

I finally am posting my ones left behind again... this is the last for today.

At Guitar Cardio I just tried to do one on the level "difficult". It wasn't very... well, difficult.
It looks like the main difference is It was far higher notes.

Medium went anywhere from 1 to 11 on the fretboard.
The one I just did used 11,13, and 14.

I have to say, though... one I did was different. It was "double skip" triplets in C#, and they're a little more confusing.

I think the rule of thumb is to stay away from Medium until you're ready/capable of barring chords, and stay away from difficult until you've mastered every kind of chord in any position (like me, i suppose)

I bet Guitar Cardio would have helped me a lot more had I found it years ago...
But I'm obligated to make up for lost time if I wanna be good, then...

I'm proud of myself, tho... to be told I can handle anything cheers me up considerably.
It's nice to have a second opinion on your skill level.

The best guitarists don't tell people they're good... people just know.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Photoshopping From Scratch: Starry Scene

I did a from-scratch (i.e. "real") piece of digital art the other day from that night sky tutorial I mentioned a little while ago. It took FOREVER.
I'm kinda burned out now.
Here's what the tutorial showed:
This is the one that I was supposed to imitate. Considering I did my own thing, not attempting to follow fully, I think in some respects I did a better job.

I do think he did better with the mountains, but mine aren't to shabby, considering the level of difficulty. If you go and look at the actual images, the resolution is different. His is only 1024x768 (4:3), and mine is 1440x900 (8:5/widescreen).



This is mine. His is "Night Sky". This I call Starry Scene. Unfortunately, the stars don't show out in this scaled-down image. I think you can click on it to see the full-size.
There are all kinds of differences. I added a displacement map for the water, which makes mine appear more realistic close-up, imho.
I thought his stars were a little rough, so mine are softer.
I like the elements in mine being more centered. Plus, his light-blue distant mountains seemed kinda fake - I faded mine - I almost removed them completely. My glow is lower, too.
Also, I colored the tree edges green, so on closer inspection you'd see that it's not just a black smudge - they are tree branches.


...
My mom's about to get a lot of website attention, and someone else wants to sell her book, thinking the image I did was of a real book! Well, They're a normally only-print company, and are making an exception in her case. I guess they like my pic!

Well, as her radio interview comes out the 7th, She wants me to help with a website tweak, as well as do the same for Turtle Soup that comes out in August that I did with The Privateer.
I'm excited to help. At least somone's cashing in on my ability...

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Finishing iKnow Backup

I've been meaning to go over some stuff I covered the 12th at smart.fm/iKnow.
It was the last time I put real work in.

Those of you with short attention spans can skip ahead to the highlights.
I like to put this list down for my own sake.

大好き - daisuki - loved (adj)
晴れる - hareru - to be sunny, clear up
汚い - kitanai - dirty
空く - suku - be empty
上る - noboru - to go up
髪の毛 - kaminoke - hair
茶色 - chairo - light brown
ご飯 - gohan - rice
つける - tsukeru - switch on
日 - nichi - day

月曜日 - getsuyoubi - Monday
今週 - konshuu - this week
開く - hiraku - to open
あれ - are - that(over there)
二 - ni - two
閉まる - shimaru - shut, be closed
締める - shimeru - fasten, tighten
水 - mizu - water
入る - hairu - enter
片仮名 - katakana

まずい - mazui - bad tasting, bad
ひらがな - hiragana
曇る - kumoru - become cloudy
触る - sawaru - touch, feel
駄目 - dame - no good
書き直す - kakinaosu - rewrite
飲み物 - nomimono - drink, beverage
木曜日 - mokuyoubi - thursday
曜日 - youbi - day of week
そば - soba - side, vicinity



Okay, now that's out of the way...

The Highlights

Things I take note of:

days of the week = cliché. See Here if you really gotta know.
Numbers = also cliché. See Here for numbers.

I did see the connection that:
taberu = to eat, tabemono=food
nomu= to drink, nomimono=beverage

So what's "mono" mean? I went and found out, of course.
物 - mono - thing, object

So now we know 食べ物 = "food thing", and 飲み物 = "drink thing".
Huh.

Aside a lot of basic words that day, I spotted:

汚い - kitanai - dirty
まずい (mazui) - bad-tasting, bad

髪の毛 - kaminoke - hair(on head)
and this 毛 for hair, coat, covering looks TOO MUCH like 手 for hand.
Poo. Oh well... I'll get over it.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Another Day of Practice...

Today all I did was practice, again... I want to do something cool, but I haven't had the time...

For those of you who play guitar, and haven't been to Guitar Cardio.com, you're missing out.
The practice you can get there can't be replaced by anything else...

It's like every mathematically possible practice exercise in one place, and you can grab one randomly. It's getting my fingers stronger, I can tell already.

Also, you'll notice a few theory things along the way...
I found a neat little movable two octaves today, like on a piano:

---------------------------1-2-
-----------------------2-4-----
-----------------1-3-4---------
-----------1-3-4---------------
-----1-2-4---------------------
-2-4---------------------------

That can be slid to any position on the guitar. Add -1 for E, 0 for F, 2 for G, all the way up to +11 for E again!

I'm glad I've gone back there... I forget how much it helps me...

Friday, March 20, 2009

Doing a Book (In PhotoShop)

Well, My mom has a book she's published coming out soon, and it's being sold online as an e-book, maybe/maybe not in print later.

For those interested in the book itself, it's about 18th century naval battles, I think. I haven't read it yet, but I hope to soon. It sounds pretty good. It comes out April 17th. You can find more at my link "mom's books" to the left, or just click here.

She wanted me to do an illustration of a book for it, rather than just the flat image someone threw together for her as a cover.

This is it.

I honestly had a moment of frustration when I first saw it way back when. I could have done a better job than whoever she paid to, had I had a source photo of such a boat. I just didn't help her because I didn't know where to find one.


I could do better water, better clouds, better lighting... It's not that bad, though. Still... I feel kinda dumb. I need to get better at finding source pics.



Here is my book. Or her book. Or whatever.
This isn't one she's using, but it's my presentation of it. She preferred a plain white background.

What I did was use free transform to give perspective. I moved a duplicate right and down once, then duplicated that a couple times with ctrl+alt+shift+T on the same layer. That made a front cover, with thickness.
I duplicated all of that and moved it left and up to be the back cover.

Then I used the single-column marquee tool to select the edge of the front and transformed it to make the spine. I put a low-opacity fill over it to make the spine different and darker and less striped from the stretch.
I copied the text from the original with color select, and used it on the spine via transform.

The pages was the tricky part. I finally ended up deciding to just do a carefully crafted white shape. I cut triangles out along the back page corners. You can't see it in this scaled-down image.

Last, I played. I found a nice gradient, I did a reflection, and I added mild shadows and lighting. I think it's a job well done!

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Smart.fm History 1 - Meals

I haven't spoken much about the stuff I've done at iKnow.
I do work there.
I need to get back more recently, but the 10th and 12th I was actually there getting things done.

Here's what I pulled from that day's practice and learning.

For those less interested, skip to the end, the more interesting part.


土曜日 - doyoubi - Saturday
金曜日 - kinyoubi - Friday

神 - kami - god, spirit (important in scripture!)

晩 - ban - evening, night

お父さん - otousan - father (i know お母さん - okaasan - mother, too)

太い - futoi - thick, fat
痛い - itai - painful
多分 - tabun - probably
時計 - tokei - clock, watch
どうして - doushit - why
掛ける - kakeru - hang, put on
曲がる - magaru - turn
泊まる - tomaru - stay overnight

おなか - onaka - stomach
閉める - shimeru - close, shut
嫌い - kirai - dislike
要る - iru - need, require
無い - nai - to not be
黄色い - kiiroi - yellow (a color!)
風邪 - kaze - cold (illness) (kaze means wind, too)
優しい - yasashii - gentle, kindhearted
ミーティング - mi-teingu - meeting (an english steal, obviously)


the interesting part


There are three (well, four) words I've picked up that apparently are used for meal words.
朝 - asa - morning
昼 - hiru - afternoon
晩 - ban - evening (same one seen today)
ご飯 - gohan - rice

Add them and you get:

朝ご飯 - asagohan - breakfast
昼ご飯 - hirugohan - lunch
晩ご飯 - bangohan - dinner

I guess all they eat is rice... lol...

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Songs Remembered

I wrote Eliza a song to the tune of "Hey There, Delilah" ages and ages ago, for her sixteenth birthday. She brought that up and wants me to dig out the lyrics and send them to her.

I need to figure out what I did with them. They are buried away between paper and computer files. I have to sit down and reconstruct them, because I never had a hard final copy - it was all in my head.

Yuck. I want to do it and will, but that's hard enough, considering I'm still trying to figure out what I did with those lyrics I need to get to Alyssa (no, I haven't forgotten).

Hmm... Oh, and to make things worse, her mom wants me to record it. I'm not big on doing recording!!! It's not like I have a way to do a decent quality recording. I'll have to come up with something, for my sake.

Why I care? I dunno. There was a song I wrote for Sarah, but I never had an opportunity to play it for her, as dumb as that is. I ought to reconstruct that, too.

Well, amid all this nuttiness, I want to write something else. Just makes my blood pressure go up thinking of all this. Maybe I need to go do something else. Peace out.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

BubbleWorks

'BubbleWorks' ...
is the name of my newest art piece. It looks better full-size, as usual, but For what you already see it's not too bad. It was fun. More of a toy than a piece of art.
I didn't learn anything. I hated the tutorial. It was one of the ones I listed yesterday. Another one was dumb, too. I didn't even try it.
I have two left to look at, and if they're worth what they appear to be, I'll have something to show next time. We'll see.

Anyways, the things I covered in this were tricks like inventing a layer style and copy-pasting it to multiple layers. You'd be surprised how much spice that can add without significant effort. It all adds up pretty quick. I played with designing my own brushes for it. Nothing significant, though.

One thing I did learn significant today, however, is that you can make a shape with selections, and modify them, especially with free transform. Then you can fill them with a color, a gradient, and add layer styles to your heart's content!

Using layer styles and old/plain brushes often feels like cheating. It can do wonderful things, but it's easier to be proud of your work when it's your concept or creation. My Feeling Lucky Four-leaf clover (and background brush) were all from stuff I did myself with the pen tool. I can credit it all to my own idea. I'm proud of that one. I did good. If you're ever doing art you want to have value, at least to you, keep that in mind.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Finally Finished!!! (With My Writing Practice)

I've got to stop writing these so late at night. Also, I need to actually go to my blog and post them... I'm falling way behind...

Anyway, I finished with my Kanji writing and I'm going to do some examination on what I've learned. I can't write all of them a million times each... there's literally thousands of them. It would take years at this rate.

I need to learn what I've learned, such that I can improve my overall, rather than each individually. maybe there's a place online with guidelines for determining the stroke order or something.

I am going to re-write them beneath a place where I wrote them all beforehand. That way, I'll be able to compare how much I've improved.

I may start writing Grade 2 ones, but there's twice as many. (exactly... 80 vs. 160)
So... yeah. I don't know. It'll be a lot of work. I really need to get back to iKnow/Smart.fm.

Next time I might post some stuff I've written down that I learned there recently.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Playing Guitar (Hero) Again

On a side note, I'm well under way on beating Expert on GH. I rock in every meaning of the word. lol...

I've got back to playing my guitar more (finally), and I must say I feel kinda stuck.
I haven't done much new of late.

I'm thinking of writing a song, and I have the material to do so, but no lyrics.
However...

The gears are turning.
That's my expression for "i'm thinking about it".

What do you guys think? It's kinda strange to ask the internet questions, but seriously...

What topic do you think I should choose? Any ideas? I want to pick something unique.
Something close to me, but no mushy cliché love song.
It has to have meaning... I don't want it to be silly, otherwise I'd pick randomly.
I want it to be GOOD. Something people would want to listen to.

I wonder....
Well... if you've any suggestion, comments are always welcomed.
Enough musing for one night.
もう寝よ。

Friday, March 13, 2009

Photoshop Finds

Couldn't find anything worth doing until late this evening, so I'm writing this late and don't have time do anything.

I'm excited, though - I have bunches of things I want to try.

At psd|tuts+ there's a neat tutorial I want to emulate with my own stock photography here.

There's a place called eyesontutorials that has these two tuts I want to try - they're abstract art, but still... I like that kind of thing. One's called Digital Life, and the other Color Variations.

The fourth one is a beautiful illustration at AdobeTutorialz, called Night Sky.
This will be the centerpiece for a work I'll do in the future - I like it a lot.
More importantly, if I can do it, I can do it better.
Not to be arrogant, but if I see something I might outdo, I like to accept the challenge.
To me, that's part of learning. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. I learn either way.

Well, I hope to have something cool next time folks. We'll see...

Continuing to Write

Nothing new to report in the Japanese department.
I am still writing the grade 1 kanji over and over... how tedious.

I know many of them by memory.

一、二、三、四、五、六、七、八,九、十、百、千
日、月、火、水、木、金、土
子、人
大、中、小、出、右、左
赤、白、青
学、校、本、先、生、年
天、気
足、手、見、
山、
早、空、


These are some on the list I know how to say without looking.
Most of the ones I can't I know how they look and mean, just not a word with them off the top of my head.
If there's any you wanted to know, once again you'd find them in The First 80 Kanji.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

What I've Done

That's a song by Linkin Park I learned about from a friend.
It was Thomas, from when they came down a while back.

I've heard it before, but I still like it.
I don't have it, and I think I'm going to get it.

I'm going to learn to play it on guitar.
Yes... That's why I brought it up. today's a guitar day.
I'm listening to it as I write this.

It's a very inspirational song.
It reminds me of the All-American Rejects' Move Along, as far as mood goes.

The beginning is easy to play... and fun.

If any of you wonder, I learn to play songs by doing tab searches at Ultimate Guitar.

I love this youtube box... It's pretty shweet.


Let mercy come... and wash away what I've done.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Feeling Lucky?

That's actually the name of a piece I did for March.

I drew a clover from scratch and made it into a brush.
Voilá!
I love it. I may even use it as my background to my blog at some point.
I took the brush I made and played with the dynamics.
I made several scatters with gradually more and more blurred with low opacity toward the bottom. The result is a slight depth of field... It has depth. It's probably one of the shortest works I've done in a while, and considering how much I like it, it was far worth it.

In other news, Rob is a pen-tool PRO! Who knew I could do something so beautiful so easily. My drawing abilities leave a lot to be desired, but they do occasionally come through when I actually use them.

I think I should have put an outer glow on the main clover. I probably will at a later date - it would look much better that way.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Dragging through the Kanji

In my last piece on 日本語, I showed you the old grade 1 kanji I've been learning to write.

I'm still working on that. Not much has happened of late, though I am beginning to face some difficult realizations.

First off:
-Kanji have right to left strokes , it seems. And all kinds of other strokes.
(are you kidding!? I'm a cursed American. I wasn't taught to do this before!)

I'm learning to write correctly, as far as I can tell. Rather than look up online how to draw them, I'm just figuring it out by looking at the details. I draw them all kinds of ways, over and over until I get it right.
It's very slow and monotonous work, but I hope to see an increase in my abilities as time goes on.

There's not much to report on, other than I feel like a kindergartner. Well, I can only handle one column on that list in Writing the Kanji at a time. And yes, I'm going right-to-left. Lol...

So, yeah. That's all I got to say 'bout that.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Learning to Play Something Fun

I haven't had much to keep me going lately, at least as far as guitar is concerned.
I have looked for new things to do, but I keep spacing off and doing other things.

The latest obsession is writing those stupid Kanji. How pathetic.

I've looked at some like Cliffs of Dover, but some are multi-instument, and some are just too hard. I need to find something to further my guitar-playing abilites.

I have been toying with new chord groups, and I might write a song if I find some I like.
I have a chord progression encyclopedia I got at a music store years ago... I'm thinking of pulling it out to use again. It's come in handy before.

Well, maybe I'll have a cooler discovery next time.
Sayoonara.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Photoshop Issues and a Tip

I haven't got much done lately, as my PS has been issue-ey.

Well, I would love to have something to show, but unfortunately I don't.

Well, actually I do. There's a pseudo-tutorial Here that discusses how to keep the file size on a .psd down. That's always helpful, because anyone who works in PS as much as I do would know how much of a pain it is to have enormous files. they're hard to move, massive folders take ages to open, etc.

So my life is made easier by the internet once again... if only marginally.

I found a neat transparent glass tutorial for text, if anyone wants to see it.
I've noticed PSDtuts has changed, as their series of websites has become tuts+. so now it's
psd | tuts+
I like the feel a bit better. I use their site vector | tuts+ for Illustrator.

Hopefully I'll have a pic to show you next time around. Until tomorrow, folks.

***March 18
I left my laptop for a long time - though my life still goes on. I have a pile of posts to put up. I'll put up several a day till it's live. Sorry for the backup - to those of you who actually care.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Smart.fm Habits and Writing the Kanji

Lately I've had trouble with Smart.fm/iKnow always wanting to be down. They have issues to work out - having moved their servers from Japan to San Fran in a day, and I'm not mad... still - it makes it hard to maintain my habit of practice when I don't know when I'll be able to.

Today had a ridiculous amount of review.
All that was new was 2 each time. I covered these:
始まる - hajimaru - to begin
食べ物 - tabemono - food
ゲーム (ge-mu) - game
十 - juu - 10
天気 - tenki - weather
暑い - atsui - hot, warm

Desperate for for new material, I identified these along the way.
かゆい (kayui) - itchy
海 - umi - sea, beach
窓 - mado - window
ビデオゲーム (bideoge-mu) videogame
近所 - kinjo - neighborhood
皿 - sara - plate, dish

Hopefully next time I'll see more new.

These are the 80 Grade one Kanji I've been working on writing. I've done the first four columns so far. I'm writing them repetitively kindergarten-style. I've seen marked improvement in my ability to see them in my head - recognizing and reproducing are two different things.
I'm learning to "write" better now!
You can find the meanings in my First 80 Kanji Post.
http://www.learn-japanese.info/kanjifirst.gif
Credit for these goes to http://www.learn-japanese.info/

Beating Hard - Upside Down

I beat it!!! I beat the Devil Went Down to Georgia final battle!
I was extremely pleased with myslef... seems like I've been finghting to for weeks.
I'm trying to F.C. (100%) all of easy for fun... if we get five stars on all we'll get a new guitar, supposedly.

Enough Guitar Hero.

Jack Johnson! I'm so cliché.
Lol... no, seriously. tonight Thomas showed me a music video of him doing "Upside Down" for Curious George.

It's kinda cute to me, and I love the song.
This one I actually recommend you check out.

Watch it! It's cool.
I'm SO learning this one. I love JJ. Even more.

If you're interested, Eliza brought me on to this very sad one.
It parallels some stuff she's dealing with so well it just about made me cry.
It's White Horse, by Taylor Swift.


I also want to give a shout out to Andrea... I know it sounds silly, but I wasn't aware videos could be put straight in until I saw her do it... I just was a little slow on making the connection that I could figure out how to do it as well. I may be a veteran of the internet, but I'm new to the creating/coding/blogging side of it.

Well... I've been staying up because Stacy and Darren took Thomas to the hospital over his asthma. I was goung to stay up till they got back, but it's almost 3:30. I've got to sleep eventually. Peace.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Been Kept Away... but Happy!

My parents had to go to Las Vegas for a writer's convention and with me and my brothers left here at home, we're not on allowed on the internet until Stacy&Thomas get here... so it means I won't be on the internet for a few days... this will be late... poo.

Anyways, I did some artwork I hadn't had ready to show till now.
It's Happy to See You.
I have been meaning to look into the minimalist art or whatever they call it... where there's just a simple subject. Playing with a tutorial that looked both important and annoying, I decided to make a smiley face in ridicule of the aforementioned tutorial. It came out so much better than I expected I made it into it's own little slice of art. The back gradient took forever - I was toying with colors for ages. I finally settled on white, light yellow-green, a light cyan, and a medium sky blue.

I like it. I put it as my desktop wallpaper temporarily. How many works of art can be described so well by as little as two characters? :)

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

iKnow Is Now A Part Of Smart.fm

Today sucks. iKnow is GONE.
By gone I mean they removed the iKnow website.
iKnow was a learning application that the iKnow site provided. Now it's Smart.fm.
The iKnow application is still there, but iKnow's website that held my items in progress, etc. appears to be gone. I had to create a new username for Smart.fm.
the iKnow address redirects to Smart.fm now.
well... it's not all bad.
I'll just move on to the Part 2 of the Core 2000 series I had been in.

The review over section 1 was getting old, anyways.


Today I worked some, but the site keeps going up and down, so I am not sure it saved...

Here's what I have to cope with for now:
時 - toki - time
閉じる - tojiru - close
切る - kiru - to cut
米 - kome - rice
線 - sen - line
決まる - kimaru - to be decided (I know i've used this kanji somewhere before... hmm...)
楽しい - tanoshii - fun, enjoyable
服 - fuku - clothes
後ろ - ushiro - back, behind
嬉しい - happy, glad

日曜日 - Nichiyoubi - Sunday (redundant... i know this)
開ける - akeru - to open, unlock (scarily close to makeru-to lose)
腰 - koshi - hip, lower back
昼 - hiru - daytime, midday
お母さん - okaasan - mother (huh... a form i didn't know)
留学生 - ryuugakusei - student studying abroad (i.e. foreign exchange student)
大学生 - daigakusei - college student (thought i did this... must remember 大学校 (college))
終わり - owari - end, conclusion (the noun form of owaru-to end I suppose)
背 - se - height
手伝う - tetsudau - help, assist

鼻- hana - nose
起きる - okiru - to occur (this is from last time! I knew 大学生 looked familiar!)
熱い - atsui - hot (something actually useful... finally.)
載せる - noseru - to place, put on (apparently you can use either kanji - 載 or 乗 )
悲しい - kanashii - sad
愛する - aisuru - to love, care for (i already know this kanji)
近く - chikaku - vicinity, nearby (another I already knew)
しゃべる(shaberu) - to chat, talk (doesn't have a kanji, oddly)
甘い - amai - sweet (food)
テーブル (teeburu) - table (an English steal)

now I have to deal with English homophones... close/clothes... lol...
well, they're not really homophones, but close enough to be disorienting.
Oh, and "sen" is also 千 - 1000. So yeah, homophones, anyone?

Anyone watch Naruto? Enough to know the character Gaara? The kanji on his forehead is love.




And now for some naughty/immature humor just because I can:
彼女 は お母さん が 熱い です。
kanojo wa okaasan ga atsui desu.
ever heard that weird/dumb song stacy's mom? lol...

well... I can say more things now with my better vocab... like
昨日 私 は 新しい 服 が 買いました。
kinou watashi wa atarashii fuku ga kaimashita.
Yesterday I bought new clothes.

Well... lets keep the vocab rolling I guess... lol... I hope iKnow or Smart.fm or whatever saved my work.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Playing Guitar (Hero +/- Hero)/2

It's a math trick for being both guitar and guitar hero, for those of you not in a thinking mood.
I was bored and did that to entertain myself... it's something I used to use in programming.

The whole title thing?
My brother was playing Barracuda on expert and I was sitting there with my real guitar playing along. I learned it as he went... lol... I'm getting better at playing by ear.

I've been playing all the songs I know, and I needed to pick up something new... so I did.

It's called Taylor by... yep. Jack Johnson.

I know it should get rather old to keep learning his songs...
But every time I do, I learn something I needed to, something significant.

This time around it's getting more serious on the hammer-ons and pull-offs. I wouldn't have been capable of doing it until now. I've thought about learning this one for months, though, so it's about time. It's a good thing I didn't, too because I probably wouldn't have been able to and would have given up.

Eliza discovered Fall For You by Secondhand Serenade, and I haven't played that one in ages. It's one that's technically piano, but it's the type that sounds good on guitar too.
Too bad How to Save a Life (by The Fray) doesn't, or I'd have learned it too.
I feel obligated to brush up on it. It's just C,F,G, and Am, but because that's all they use, it's shuffled up so many ways that the memorization is a nightmare.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Incoming!!! New Artwork

I have a lot of new stuff I've spit out since last time... I can't even show it all now... I'm saving some for next time!

First off... Fiery Collapse
This one is my first attempt at artwork using zoom and spin in (filter, blur) radial blur. It is almost a concept piece in that respect. I like it - to me it's matter approaching the event horizon of a black hole. Nobody knows what happens once it's beyond that line. Not even light can escape it, so once info or material goes in, nothing comes out - there's no way to know. As things are squished with near infinite force, the temperatures generated are ridiculous. That's why my colors of choice were red, yellow and white.

This one is called Vector Exit
I like this one probably the most out of the three. It's arrows and bubbles fleeing toward the horizon. Toward what? From what? that's for you to decide. It was all transform - perspective that did it - unfortunately I had to battle against quality loss.

It has almost a sci-fi feel to it - like it's some white room opening into outer space. Life is like that; you're sucked into the future whether you like it or not.

This is Positive Influx
I did this one similar to the first, but there was a lot more play to it. I added colors on a top color-mode layer with a soft low-opacity brush. It's the energy flowing through the electrons in an electric cord of some kind. It started as an attempt to make my own brushes, which had a give-a-mouse-a-cookie effect... one experiment led to another until I did a whole image. I originally hadn't planned on doing anything else today, what with the other two and all.

Like I said, more next time... That's Thursday, I think.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

iKnow is going down... and Kanji Grade 2

I need to get on iKnow more... It's supposed to go down for a while for renovation around Wednesday.

I haven't got too much done today.

You'd think I would, as it's Sunday, but I really haven't been up to anything, really.
It's falling back and I've been doing more of photoshop.

I'll get practice in, though. I can't stop just because I have less interest than usual.

I think I'll work on finishing up the Grade 2 jouyou kanji.
There's 160 of them, as opposed to the 80 I listed (in The First 80 Kanji)

I think I have like, 75% of them or somewhere about there to where I recognize them. I need to get to work in that area, though. That way I can move on to better things.

I might list them in a few days... and add the post to my Japanese Resource site.

It takes time to put such an enormous list together, though. I have to have the kanji, kana/romaji, onyomi and kunyomi together in a chart I code myself... it's rather tedious.

I also need to sit down to paper an pen and draw the kanji over and over. That should help my ability to recognize and/or reproduce them considerably.