Still Alive

Here I am again, early in the morning filling out the previous day's post.
What a miserable day. I accomplished nothing. It's as if I never woke up.
And I didn't eat much, either. I was starving until I made myself some oatmeal and a ham sandwich. At a few minutes past midnight.

That's not entirely true - I did hack vista big time - I'm excited and pleased - but I'll talk of that another day.

I am going to write another song, and I'm not in the mood to right this minute.
Seems like my only abilities are before I go to sleep, and it's getting late. I'm actually trying to finish things up so I can get to bed.

There are lots of places to find inspiration, and I found a funny one I've kinda learned and I'm going to rip some inspiration off of it.
It's Still Alive, the end credits to a game called Portal.
Eliza showed it to me. She found it amusing - I, looking up the story behind it, found it rather creepy.

You can find it HERE if you're interested. (and the cake is a lie.)

Seems like a lot has been lagging behind. Tomorrow's Japanese will be all-out, then. I need to turn over another new leaf.

Stroking Paths and Heartache

I'm working on doing something for Valentine's Day.
I do live in a bit of fear of it, though... Let's just say it will be the best or the worst day ever, and I hate uncertainty.

It's eating at me.

I'm working on a piece that's rather anti-valentine, though it didn't start out that way.
I guess it's just a mood thing.
We'll see what happens - I'm optimistic something significant will happen with it.
It's late, and I'll finish it another day.

Maybe you'll see it next time!


I found out how to use the stroke path again. I hadn't been able to fix it in ages.
I had to turn the internet upside down to figure it out.
To follow along a pen-tool path with the brush previously used,
right-click with the pen tool and select "stroke path...", check "simulate pressure", and hit ok.

that's the basics.
the problem is, in order for it to fade at the ends, you have to go to the brush menu and check/open shape dynamics, and set the size jitter (leave all bars at 0) control to "Pen Pressure".

It makes beautiful sweeps and arcs.
So as not to leave you empty-handed for today, here's a link to an easy and pretty example:
Electrifying Energy Beams

Peeking at Unit Two

At iKnow I did all my practice today.
I'm at 70%, and I have 20 completed.
I've said before, I'm finished "starting" all the words.

I started a new section, even though my first one isn't finished.
I did this just to see what lies ahead.

I'm doing the Core 2000 series, and there are 10-200 blocks.
I started "step 2" just to preview what's next, even though I'm still on the first one.

It gave me ten new ones... I really wasn't ready, but oh well.
閉じる - tojiru - to close
楽しい - pleasure, fun
時 - toki - time
米 - kome - rice
後ろ - ushiro - behind
嬉しい - ureshii - happy
切る - kiru - to cut
決まる - kimaru - to be decided
線 - sen - line
服 - fuku

The last three I'd forgotten and had to go find. I managed to remember the rest, though. That's good- it means I'm retaining most of what I'm learning.

Sweet Home Alabama

Yep. I figured it was time to take a peek at learning that.
It's one of the classic "everyone knows it" songs.

I picked up the tabs from ultimate-guitar... I can kinda do it, but I haven't heard it in so long I'm not sure how some of the timing goes.

I'm going to look it up and listen to it.
That should help. A lot. Not tonight, though.

It has a lot of hammer-ons and pull-offs which should help me "apply what I've learned", if you know what I mean. I've messed with them, but I've never done a song that uses everything.

If all goes well (and it probably will) I should be officially a "great" guitar player if I can get something like that down.

I'm hopeful - it will require lots of work, though.

I'm not in a particularly good mood, it seems, so that's it for today.
Peace.