Triplets and Fingering

On a side note, I beat One by Metallica on GH finally.
All I have is left now is the finale -
the battle against the devil playing Devil Went Down to Georgia.
It's both the most entertaining battle and most difficult (he's cheating scum.)

Anyway...
Today I worked on playing better, faster, etc. - It's hard work.
I got my chord progression encyclopedia out and played through the front.
I may get serious and do a harder chunk in a bit.

The latest work is toughening and improving my fingers.
I have been using my index+middle+ring to play triplets on three strings, and I'm trying to get faster at doing that. I'm mixed it up, throwing random patterns in - I even tried doing four strings with three fingers.

Also, lately I've noticed my clumsiness on the G string when barring chords. I'm not getting down to it. I need to strengthen my index finger, or at least improve my technique.

I have played through songs I know a fair bit, and I can play faster than before - so there's definitely some improvement going on.

Having Fun Again ! Pomp-Tuition!

Today I did something in Photoshop.... something FUN!
I usually get impatient and annoyed - I was getting a little impatient with this one, but I'm done.
I'm glad to be back in the PS department.
It's called Pomp-Tuition.
It's from a tutorial I did off a PS-Roadmap link. I like the process - though I messed up the lighting at the end. I need to go back and see if I can fix it, maybe do it again better.

It taught that if you play with Layer Styles and get a neat one, you can copy+paste it on several different things. It was all actual characters that were rotated and placed. Most of the layers were text layers. It's not a fancy font - just something plain, blown up large, with layer styles of inner shadow, outer glow, and bevel/emboss.

The font was Georgia, by the way... and the streaks/ribbons were done simply with the pen tool.

I liked it! I hope to do something much better next time around.

iKnow it's Getting Old... Animals!

Today I did more at iKnow.
They waste my time with ones I've got to 100%.
My overall progress is only up to 87%. It's trickling by 2 percentages still, it seems.

Some of the (not very) interesting ones I stumbled over today were:

次 - tsugi - next
消す - kesu - to turn/switch off
The homophone,
速い/早い - hayai - fast/early
My ryhming conundrum :
病気 - byouki - illness
飛行機 - hikouki - airplane
(silly, I know - but I need to staighten these out.)

One of my random notes I made was
猿 - saru - monkey
Lol... monkey...
Hey, I just realized - I know a few animals...

猫 - neko - cat
犬 - inu - dog
鳥 - tori - bird
猿 - saru - monkey
牛 - ushi - cow
きりん(kirin) - giraffe
馬 - uma - horse
and a few I looked up:
蛇 - hebi - snake
熊 - kuma - bear
動物 - doubutsu - animal

If I missed one you'd care to know, look it up easy here.

Receiving the Eagle Scout Award

Today I spent every waking moment dealing with my Eagle Court of Honor.
I had things to write out, I had to iron all of the uniform, there was the actual occasion that evening, and that night I spent dealing with concerns abt... Eliza. Her boyfriend broke up with her - not like we didn't see it coming.

I gave an acceptance speech thingy - it went well, supposedly. I ended up directing it toward the younger scouts and the cub scouts that were there. I gave my two-cents about why Scouting is important and why they should never give up, I think.

That evening I saw Sarah there at church. We spoke for a bit - Everyone was dressed up - it was kind of amusing. Aside a personal fiasco involving her I won't mention, nothing significant happened. But needless to say, clearly the assertion that she's just been busy is true. My freak-out mode officially ended yesterday...

Uh... by the way, for those who wonder, Sarah is my girlfriend, or at least was at one point (complicated i know), and Eliza's my best friend - she lives like 7 hours away these days... but we keep in touch still. She's moving to Utah around the time I go back to BYU-I, so we might hang out every now and then more in the future.


Anyways...
I listen to music from Guitar Hero that I put on my iPod more than I thought I would. I skip lame bonus tracks, but considering the GH songs constitute 88 out of a little over 400 songs I have, I would hear them randomly often.
It's part of getting exercise - I listen to it when I go running.

This is one of my "big news" posts - there aren't very many occasions where I deviate almost completely. But with Eliza's breakup, my Sarah, and my Eagle Scout award thing tonight, there are always things to be blabbing about.
I'll shutup for now.
Peace.

The V-Day Equivalent

Today I got to spend time with Sarah, finally.
We ended up watching a movie with her little brothers.
It was that Jack Black "Kung-fu Panda" movie. It was better than I thought it'd be.

We played with their parakeet, Bobby - her brother Eric keeps it these days, and was out of town at the time or something - they were keeping it for him.
We had a lot of fun. I have missed spending time with her greatly.

With all that's been going on, I haven't had the luxury of time on my laptop these days.
My Eagle Court of Honor thing is tomorrow and there's stuff to be stressed about.

I spent most of the morning going running today.
I need to get back into shape - exercise is important, especially as we're approaching summer.

I hope to get back to Photoshop as soon as possible.

I'm loaded up on Photoshop to-do, ideas, tutorials, etc.
For those of you looking for my usual artwork, I'll have something next time, I promise.
In the mean time, you could take a look at some of these - they're from some of the best.
http://www.artistsofphotoshop.com/

Virtue And Review

善良 - zenriyou - virtue, goodness
This is a word I thought to look up from church Sunday.
Just something random...
there's not much new with Japanese of late... just doing reviews finishing up this first section at iKnow.

Here's a couple I've been working on getting better with...
図書館 - toshokan - library
授業 - jugyou - class, lesson
引く - hiku - draw, pull
全部 - zenbu - all, wholly (i.e. I want all of them.)
上げる - ageru - raise, improve

I knocked everything out of the park today - don't think I made a single mistake.
All of the once not completed are in the 50-99% benchmark - so it's all downhill from here.

I hope to come up with something fun to do to revive my motivation... like watching Naruto (sad, i know.)

No Guitar Hero Today

I don't know if I mentioned, but I finally have all the Guitar Hero songs on my iPod. I had them for a while, but I wasn't sure how I wanted to group or sort them.
I finally just gave up and threw them into iTunes.

Well, today is Sarah's birthday (the "girlfriend") and I still haven't got in touch with her.
It's really depressing.
Our relationship has never been simple, but I don't know what to do with myself.
I got her something for V-day, but still haven't given it to her.

I talked to her mom for a few minutes. She said she's been busy. From the way she's treated me when we last spoke on the phone - a long while ago - that's probably all it is.
I hope I'm right. We'll see. I really do miss her at this point, for a million reasons.

It will probably cheer me up to have Guitar Hero III on my iPod. I will probably not take advantage of it till tomorrow, though.
I'm in a lot of discomfort. I get my bandages out on Monday, too. Yuck.

I won't have them today - I don't play GH or listen to that kind of music on the Sabbath. It's the Lord's day of the week, and focusing on inviting the spirit, reading my scriptures, etc. is better.

Happy Birthday Sarah! She'll never read this though. I just needed to say it.

Well, I often strum my guitar mindlessly in the evening, and I've been able to play a few hymns. I'm not even sure what the names of the songs are or the words. I just pull a distant tune from my head. It does invite the Spirit, though. I feel at peace.

Saturday Tutorializing : Energy Curves

Today I just dug through some tutorials.
I have a mountain of illustrator ones, always more photoshop ones, and I've burned myself out on attention span.
Maybe in a few weeks I'll take them seriously.
I have too many things occupying me to deal with such unimportant life tasks.
Today's piece is called Energy Curves.
I have taken my time on this one, mainly because it's a simple one that left me rather confused.

I finally figured out a principle related to layers and "clipping masks". Layers apply to all the ones below them, but you can get them to only apply to a certain one. The colors were applied over top the lines as clipping masks. this way, I could put whatever I want in the back without worrying about color spillage onto it
(this would cause a "glow look" even if done well).
In the end, I actually decided to put similar colors in the back, so it didn't matter so much. It could have, though, if say I wanted the back blue or yellow or purple.

I think it turned out ok. It's nothing incredible, but it's good considering I haven't had the emotional energy to accomplish more. I like the stars... they were a last-min addin.

The inspiration tutorial is HERE. I think his/her end result looks like crap, tho. Mine's better. I feel a little guilty saying that - Seeing as it gave me the idea.

Out of Town, Out of Mind

Today was the worst day ever.

We went to Chattanooga to visit my mom's old friend Stacey and her son and her new husband Danny. It was fun in a way, but I suffered through most of it.
Thomas is 14 - Bradley's age. and yet he's taller than Darren who's two years his senior.
Oh, and yeah, Darren is two years younger and taller than me.
Grr.
Thomas is a quirky and unique kid - called the "gentle giant", he's gifted and a musical genius.
He's more "refined" than any old adult rich person. Knows his history and lots of stuff most adults don't. He plays the flute. A delight to converse with, his vocabulary is a force to be reckoned with.

My wisdom teeth - or lack thereof - hurt all day, I was bleeding badly somewhere deep in the back of my mouth and it drained into my stomach all day - nasty.
Ever drank carbonated blood? Don't.
The burps make you want to die.

I also had a terrible migraine all day - worst headache ever.
I got nauseous from the blood in my stomach.
I also got carsick. Yes. Nausea and Carsickness are different and can be had simultaneously.

I still can't get a hold of my girlfriend and it's tearing my mind apart.
Eliza's sick w/ a headache and pretty mad at everything today too, and just as stricken in the heart. We won't go there, though.

I made my parents mad with my short fuse and they said some harsh things.
I'm hating my life right now. And my self.
So... yeah.

Things will get brighter, though.
It's probably all due to the wisdom teeth crap.
Life moves on.

Tomorrow should be a better day... hopefully.

Japanese!!! I have to do something. I haven't had time today.
Hmm... time... iknow! lol...

時間 - jikan - hour
時 - toki - time
今 - ima - now

遅い - osoi - late,slow
早い - hayai - early,fast

昨日 - kinou - yesterday
今日 - kyou - today
明日 - asu/ashita - tomorrow

and since i don't recall listing these:
日曜日 - nichiyoubi - Sunday (sun)
月曜日 - getsuyoubi - Monday (moon)
火曜日 - kayoubi - Tuesday (fire)
水曜日 - suiyoubi - Wednesday (water)
木曜日 - mokuyoubi - Thursday (tree)
金曜日 - kinyoubi - Friday (gold)
土曜日 - doyoubi - Saturday (earth)

Obsessed with Guitar Hero

I'm officially a Guitar Hero nerd. The very one I've always disliked.
Oh well. Too late, now.

I'm stuck on the last chapter of Hard mode.
I just beat Raining Blood by Slayer today. It's the first one.
It's stupid. I won't be playing it again anytime soon.

I already skipped ahead and had beat the second and third.
they are:
Cliffs of Dover by Eric Johnson ...and
Number of The Beast by Iron Maiden

Cliffs of Dover is a beautiful instrumental. Even those that don't care too much for electric guitar would like it. Someday I'm gonna learn it.
Those of you looking for something entertaining, watch this nutter FC it ("full count" i.e. 100%) on expert mode here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOLZeeCS0-4
It's actually neat to watch and listen to, considering it is silly guitar hero.

Right now I'm stuck on the last one...

One by Metallica.

I have... only One left in the game.
lol...
Well, sorta. Then I get to play Devil Went Down To Georgia.
It's a guitar battle. against the devil. even better, I live here in Georgia.

peace out.

Fire's on the mountain, run boys, run...
the Devil's in the house of the rising sun.

Illustrator Tutorials

I've been loaded up with so many Illustrator tutorials it's not funny.

I've got hypertext coming out of my ears.
There's way too much for me to look at, and it's driving me nuts. I've got a lot to sort through.

I did run into the companion site to PSDTuts for Illustrator, VectorTuts.
You can find VectorTuts HERE, for those interested.

Lee, by the way, I'm curious to know what you have to say.
I haven't asked you about illustrator. I'm sure you could show me something - you know more than I do.

I've even found links to tutorials that use both Photoshop and Illustrator, like the ones HERE at VandelayDesign

I may put out a list of everything in some post, even if it's only for my own reference.
Yep. I actually post things for me to read sometimes. Sad, huh?

Putting Off Today

I got my wisdom teeth out today.
I'm writing this retroactively, i.e. I wasn't conscious enough to write this today.

So unfortunately, my Japanese practice didn't get done. I'll work on it tomorrow.
I'm getting my kanji together with my vocab to see what i do and don't know still.

Back at iKnow recently, they've started giving me the last problem, where you have to spell it, twice. The first time they give me the English, like always, but now they want me to know it just looking at the kanji. It's not been so bad... yet.

It should help with my kanji recognition, I suppose. That's always a plus.

I'm to 81% with this section now. I hope to move on to number 2 soon.
I got 13 more passed off, all really old ones that beginners would know.
I think 彼女-kanojo-girl(friend) was among them. Yeah - dumb stuff.

Well, nothing else new besides that. I'm in a lot of pain right now.

If Guitar Hero Were Real...

No. I'm not some nerd fantasizing about being cool.
Quite the contrary.

I've decided to learn all of the songs in Guitar Hero (III) on my guitar in order.
On my guitar = for real.

Not to be too silly, but I guess I could call myself a real guitar hero at some point.

It doesn't seem like it will be too difficult.
I worked on the first one, Slow Ride by Foghat today.
I just about have it down.

I'm kinda proud of myself.

I'm getting my wisdom teeth out tomorrow, and I'm kinda freaked out.
I hope I get this up in the evening before I get to bed, otherwise it won't be seen for a few days.

Valentine's Weekend In Pseudo Review

My Valentine's Day is not over folks. It's tomorrow, because my girl was out of town this weekend ...unfortunately.
Dunno who the idiot is who planned that youth conference thingy over V-Day.
grrr.

Anyways, hopefully it should be a good day. I need to get to bed so I can get up earlier, for related reasons.

Today I didn't do too much in photoshop.
I did change my blog background to something for Valentine's Day a few days ago, for those of you reading this via a reader who didn't know...
It was hard to do - I wanted it to suit the month without coming off entirely gay.

I think it's good, though - it just replaced the snowflakes with hearts - another pain-in-the-neck blending mode experiment.

I think I want to emulate Lee's ideas somehow. His area of expertise is Illustrator, and he's incredible. You can find him at Leetopia. I love his blog look of late.

Today my brother was playing with a pic of Bowser in PS CS2 on our wrecked up old computer. I let him use my CS4 - I think it's easier to use - it's definitely faster.
I'm wondering if this will become a trend - considering we don't usually get along so well, it might be a good thing.

Valentine's Weekend Number Three

V Day. And what a crummy one at that.
Yes, I began a sentence with "and". And you're going to deal with it.

Anyways, so much for getting this in early.

"I love you" transcends all languages.

Love is universal. Love is everywhere. Love has always been, and will always be.
Most Music is about love.

Love is the most desired thing in the world, and the hardest to find.
Love is optional, and yet mandatory.
Love is the light and the dark in the world.
Love is the best feeling ever, and also the worst.
Love is inspirational, and retarding.
Love opens our view to the world. Love blinds us.

Love is what I want and what I hate.

Japanese: Ai shiteru.
愛してる。


Spanish/Portuguese/Latin ?
Te amo.
(Italian is "ti amo".)

Greek?
S' ayapo.

Korean?
Tangsinul sarang ha yo.

French?
Je t'aime.

German?
Ich liebe dich. (I think)

Arabic?
Ana behibak. (to M)
Ana behiBek. (to F)

Chinese?
Wo ie ni.

Hebrew?
Ani ohev at (M to F)
Ani ohev atah (F to M)


Love you guys!



愛

Valentine's Weekend Number Two

Today is guitar, and I'm still working on my little song.
I've got ideas, but the lyrics always come rather slow.

Here's some links to some of the love songs me and friends have liked of late.

Jason Mraz's Lucky

We The Kings' Check Yes, Juliet

We The Kings' Secret Valentine

Jason Mraz's Prettiest Friend

Bryan Adams's Have You Ever Really Love A Woman?

Happy Friday the 13th! And Pre-V-Day, at that.

Valentine's Weekend Number One

Today I worked on Valentine's day stuff in Photoshop all day.
Something is wrong with my CS2, so I'm using just CS4 now.
This is the yield of all I've been doing.
Most of the tutorials out there are nothing but abstract art focused around either a single heart or multiple ones.

It all became the same after awhile, so I elected to just make all the different hearts at once. There are nine different ones. The original background I worked on was disgusting, so I tried turning it red and that didn't help. I tried blurring it and it looks awesome now. All of these hearts can be found in one form or another at:
Web Design's "Romantic Design Trends"

It's pretty cool, in my opinion. I'm a guy - if it were any other time of the year I'm sure you'd think I'm gay. I apologize for being in touch with my feminine side. (just kidding.)

I learned how to do lots with blending options and layer styles - particularly gradient overlays.
I know how to do the little shiny reflections now! That's something that's been eating at me.

The Great Kanji Matchup!!!

Tonight I did some matching of kanji from my charts.
I stopped, because I had to get to bed, but I have several marked in red that are vocab.

I haven't studied kanji in a while - vocab is more important usually, but I want to list my 180-something iKnow vocab to my charts.

I printed out new charts I'm going to find a way to hang up on my wall, and I'm using the old ones to mark what's been done.

I'm going to eventually start marking off the ones I have fully memorized on the new ones, eventually.

I need to learn to write them, too. I may get a stack of blank paper to keep and just write some of them over and over everyday.

I may just start learning to duplicate the charts!

The charts in question are Kanji grades 1,2, and 3 at Nihongo no Narau ("learn-japanese.com")

Another Dancing Tuesday

This Saturday is the day the dance-teaching will occur.
Tonight we got all of the waltz straightened out, and we spent the time doing other stuff.
We covered the basics of many things.

The main things we did were:
Foxtrot, Cha Cha, Rumba, and Swing.

-Foxtrot was the most confusing when it came to aligning it to music.

-My cha-cha is back! Yay!

-I believe the rumba was a bit like waltz for a 2/4 or 4/4 music timing.
It seems to be the most useful.

-It was a different swing from the kind I know. Useful, nonetheless.


Well, I could let this hijack my guitar article, but I refuse.
So...
Lately I've gone out running/jogging and I'm getting in better shape.
I listen to my iPod during that time.
I'm beginning to think I want to learn a song by Rocket Summer.
I'm just not sure which... I like many of them.

I haven't had too much time for my guitar, with adding on Illustrator to my Photoshop workload. Illustrator is slowing everything down.
Hopefully I'll get what I need learned and accomplished soon, so everything can catch up.

I'm thinking of writing a song for Valentine's day, but I'm not sure when or of what.
I might write it and play it for Sarah when I get the chance.

Today's song of note is "colors" - by - you guessed it - Rocket Summer.
I don't have that album, and I'm waiting for a chance to go buy it.

If I had to choose one artist out of all of them, if I had to throw out all my music except for one, that one, If I could be any of the people who's music I listen to, it would be Bryce Avary aka The Rocket Summer.

I don't "idolize" people , don't get me wrong. But his music relates to me emotionally and by lyric more than any other. I'm not very emotional, either... lol...
If would give almost anything to be able to make music like him.

Not Much New

I'm still working on Illustrator stuff - none of it's finished.
Things are going slow - I have a short attention span for it and I have other things to attend to.

The past few weeks I've been gathering tutorials for Valentine's Day photoshop artwork.
It's all silly abstract focused around a heart.
I'm trying to figure out how to do the shiny part / reflections on objects, so when I finally get off my butt and do it I should learn a lot.

I am thinking of doing multiple things... it just hasn't all come together yet.

There's not anything for today, unfortunately.

Next time is the beginning of the 3-day-V-day marathon of Valentine's Day stuff.
I'll post some related artwork then, for sure, whatever I've done by then.

Not Much Left...

Today's iKnow sessions had all old stuff. Review is important, though.

I'm stumbling over buy/sell:
売る - uru - sell
買う - kau - buy

I get them switched sometimes...

I dealt with a rather unfavorable
変える - kaeru - to change
帰る - kaeru - return/come home ...this is the homophone I hate most.

I got 22 new ones to 100% !!! That's considering I only study 30. I probably have as little as 14/15 sessions left.
Considering I do at least 3 every time I'm on, I'll be done in week or two.

I do need to produce a chart of kanji to study - I need to learn to write them better.
Part of learning Japanese is learning to write. Reading is far easier. It takes a lot less effort to read than it does to write.

Next time is the last pre-V-Day post.
I'll have Valentine's Day phrases in a few languages, for fun. Be sure to check back after Wed. the 11 - I'll include some Spanish, French, and German, with 日本語, of course.

String Bending

I ran into a few problems with reading tabs recently - there was notation for something I'd never learned.

It's string bending!
If you push a sounding string left or right with the finger holding it down, it makes a
whammy bar - sounding noise.

personally, I don't care for the whammy - it deadens the sound too quick, and it makes your strings wear out faster. With all the technique out there, A whammy push is really not worth the trouble in my opinion.

But this trick, however.... is awesome. Very bluesy in certain contexts.
It's not particularly difficult, and has a lot of application.

I discovered it in Welcome To The Jungle tabs - something from GHIII.
I happened to hear it on the radio on the way to the Red-and-White Ball tonight... lol...

That was a lot of fun - that dance was youth and singles, so I got to spend time with my many friends old and new...
On another note, I actually people I can label friends now.
Life isn't so bad, I guess.

I am still dreading V-Day.

Adobe Illustrator... Yay!

I just got a new program that I've been trying to get a hold of for quite some time - nearly a year, actually - I now have Illustrator CS4.

I also got Filter Forge and PS CS4, stuff I've been wanting for a long time.

The post for today is coming really late because I was hoping to show off something from Illustrator. Unfortunately, I haven't finished learning to use it!

It is a vector program - everything is done by math - and everything is editable, as if it were made by the pen tool in Photoshop.

I've had to learn all the advanced things the pen tool does.
I'm getting better, but I have my work cut out for me.

I can't wait to use Illustrator artwork in Photoshop!
It usually comes off cartoon-looking, but it's vector, and scalable to any dimension.

I hope to have something soon, but I can't make any promises yet.
I will have something V-Day related out before then, though.

Repetitive Repetitiveness

Say that three times fast.

In all seriousness, today I saw something both surprising and irritating.
iKnow expects me to keep practicing the stuff I've passed off.

I didn't think it was so bad at first - it handed me:
持つ - motsu - to have
A very important one I'd "finished".
Then on the third and last block of the day I got four!:
置く - oku - to put
住む - sumu - to live(reside)
続く - tsuduku - to continue
分かる - wakaru - to understand

All of this gets kinda old. Review is nice, but there are other things I could be working on.
There were only three words marked as urgent/important...
出来る - dekiru - to be able/good at ...screwed this up a while back
引く - hiku - to pull, draw (like a door) ...a new one I was fuzzy on
寝る - neru - to sleep ...kinda new, but hah! I know this well.


In desperation for something original, I did pull a few in-sentence non-vocab ones:
靴 - kutsu - shoe
鳥 - tori - bird
意味 - imi - meaning
...and an often reoccurring
たくさん(takusan) - many, much, several, lots, etc.

Today's Hated Homophone (yay!) is "kiru".
着る - kiru - to wear
切る - kiru - to cut

I have spied enough "year" words I'm need to get them straight:
年 - toshi - year
今年 - kotoshi - this year
去年 - kyonen - last year
来年 - rainen - next year

Oh, and I found a cool and easy sentence for today:
I've been confused by early infinitive verb usage... it helped me.
私 は 絵 を 見る の が 好き です。
watashi wa e o miru no ga suki desu.
I (=t) pictures (=o) look at (=s) like to. t=topic p., s=subject p., o=object p.
I like to look at pictures

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.