Dragonbones and Rusted Armor

Been thinking about creating a buyable sketchbook in time for the holliday gift-buying season. I don't exactly have hoards of adoring fans that are demanding such a thing, but I thought "What the hell? Why not?" I figure that the experience of setting it up alone will be worth it.

I'm not yet sure what route I will use to publish it, nor just what exactly will be in it, or even how big it will be (though I'll want to keep the price reasonable, which implies a small(er) book). For this same reason, it will be greyscale only (aside from possibly a color cover).

There's a lot ramping up right now for Nevermet Press, so I'm going to assume that my time will be pretty heavilly restricted for a bit which is why I'm thinking about this now. Both the 'I have no time, so NOW is when my mind gets most creative.' and the 'I had best think about this LONG before I would need to put it together if I want to pull it off.'  mindsets are starting to creep in.

My question for you dear friends/family: What would YOU like to see in it? I'm assuming that I will be including my personal favorite works for the last year or two, but what about you? Want more fantasy? More sci-fi? Horror? Is there something specific? A certain character from a movie that you really like? A superhero that you've always been a fan of?

I make no promises, but I can't put it in there if I don't know you want it, so speak up damn you!

Oh - and what about a name for the book? I have a couple of ideas, but I'm curious what you guys think. If I use your idea, I'll give you a free copy. :)

The weekend thus far (rather than the weekend in review- for a change):

Friday:
Immediately following work, I rode to drop off a movie and pick up (rent) the DVD collection of Brisco County Jr.. I remember it being a fun series and Bruce Campbell s kinda a personal hero. What's more, it makes better sense than full blown movies for 'workout entertainment' as they're only one hour shows each episode, so I'm not working out for a half hour or an hour and then sitting for another hour to an hour and a half.

After picking up Bruce's misadventures, I headed back to the house where I met up with lotusanddragon  . We headed over to shellefly  's place to pick her up and than to Philly to assist in the celebrating of jeremym  's birthday at North Bowl. The place rocks - there's just no two ways about it. Great music, the drinks flow, and the lanes are clean and well maintained. That's one hell of a combination.

After bowling, the rest of the gang which included ms_violet  , boutell  , and many more (whose lj names I can't recall because I suck) headed somewhere for a drink, but lotusanddragon   and I headed back to the house since he still had to pack for his trip to Japan. We did that (I kept him company while he did it really) and got a chance for the first time in a long time to just shoot the shit. It was a grand time. We even had a mini-adventure taking a quick trip to his office for some forgotten info while K-T (who doesn't have LJ) read some of the end of the last Harry Potter book to us via my cell phone's speakerphone function. Then a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee, a moment where I broke his world a little by introducing him to the 'omg shoes' video, some chill time up on the deck, and the limo service was there to take him to the airport. It really kinda felt like the perfect way to send my bro off to another country. I sacked out afterward to some long overdue sleep.

Saturday:
Saturday morning I woke late (figured I earned it) and headed to jafosmite  's concert with X-Fusion at the 100th Annual Arden Fair. I took the Yamaha, and it was a damn good thing - the place was mobbed. I managed to find a completely illegal convenient parking space, locked up the scoot, and headed straight for where I hear the boys getting ready. The show rocked hard, though there's little surprise there. It was fun watching an all new batch of folks rockin out to X-Fusion's music. I was a little disappointed by the fact that the fair closed supah early, so I only had time to do a quick 'fly through' after the show, but I'm betting that's a good thing in the long run as I need to keep all the cash I can these days.

After the fair, I headed to good ol' Barnes and Noble for some time to do some writing, screw around, and browse the newest batch of 'how to draw' books and magazines. This is something that I haven't done in a while, and I missed it. It's something that I enjoy both with friends or alone. When I'm by myself, it's almost like meditation. I can people watch, get my thoughts in order, and often be inspired. I was impressed by my ability to not buy any of the new art books/magazines. Almost, but I managed to put them back. Really, it's not like I would use them - not in any real way. Most art books are great, but they wind up being more or less inspiration sources and that's about it. While I was sitting and parusing my latest batch of books and magazines, I got a phone call from xtingu  . Being a spaz, I went instantly into high alert mode - she was supposed to be out on the playa, and that would mean without cell phone reception of any kind at all. She assured me that nothing was wrong but that she 'just wasn't feeling it' this year and that she was homeward bound and would keep me posted on her travel plans. She said she missed me. I'm a lucky bastard like that. I stayed at B&N pretty late and went home. Once back at the house, I started working on one of the images that I got stuck in my head while at the bookstore and when I realized that it was almost 2am I hit the sack - I had a big day coming up.

Sunday:
Woke up fairly early, but not early enough. I had planned to ride with burningkirby  , Lee (sans lj), and Ballz (also sans lj). However, as I am the planning master, I didn't have any of their phone numbers and I was having net connectivity issues (I had Ballz's street address in my email account). I did finally get connected, but the whole process delayed me enough that I got to Ballz's place about 15 minutes later than planned and I hate being the limiting factor. We made our way via back roads to burningkirby  's compound where we gathered up burningkirby   and Lee and after some very minor repairs to burningkirby  's bike, we headed out. It was the perfect morning for a ride. Cool but not cold. Bright and sunny and just... frickin... gorgeous. miles melted past under our wheels as we rolled west into PA. If I can convince Ballz to send me a copy of our route, maybe I'll post it later. What a great run. I broke the 600 mile mark since buying the Yamaha with ease.

After our ride we stopped back at burningkirby  's place and had some snackages. Then off to Lee's and then I headed back to B&N. Yes, back to B&N. I've decided that I'm a creature of habit. Once I find something I like, I tend to stick with it until I find the next thing that I like. While there I got some more stuff done both in the writing and the creativity departments.

While I was at B&N, xtingu   called to let me know that she had landed and asked if I could meet her at her apartment. I said sure, packed up my gear, and headed over. We arrived at almost identical times, and commenced a good old fashioned 're-connect' kind of night. We were visited albeit briefly by theseitz   who showed us his supah sexy new iPhone. We sacked out shortly thereafter.

Monday:
We woke up a bit late and had some more really amazing reconnect time. It had been a while since xtingu   and I had the chance to talk more than "Hi - how's the weather?" Okay - I'm exagerating, but you get the point. We'd let our 'life stuff' kinda keep us so focussed that we hadn't spent much time just talking. We'd both missed it terribly and this time (Sunday night and Monday morning) really scratched that itch.

Next, we hopped on the bike and headed up to swingchickie  's place for the afternoon and got some more hang time with the good peeps. swingchickie   and Jack, jeremym   (and the always awesome JD), boutell   and Jenny, opadit   and Steve, ms_violet   and Vince, and of course xtingu   and myself. Jack manned the grill and xtingu   brought some corn salsa that was muy muy yummy.

Then, of course, there were donuts.

Now, xtingu   and I have come back to her place, she's on the phone with her folks and I'm wrapping up what was started as a "weekend up to this post" but has become a "weekend in review".

Hope you had a weekend as awesome as mine!

I was thinking about doing some t-shirt designs. Mostly, I'm probably going to stick with my forte - tribal designs and the like. However, I have some pretty damn clever friends, so I thought that I would put the word out:

If any of you have an idea for a funny (or serious for that matter) shirt - let me know. If I like the idea, and I put it on a shirt, I'll (at least) buy one of the shirts for you, and you can brag to all of your friends that you came up with the idea!

Just 'finished' getting ready for California. One of these days I'll learn to get ready in advance. Flight's at 6:30 Tomorrow:)

... and still not getting anything done.

what is it with me? when I actually have time to do stuff, here I am screwing around. it just doesn't make sense I tell ya - it just doesn't make sense.

will NOW get something done.

Okay, actually got a decent amount done on my web site tonight:

Ben was most excellent in helping me to (read as: "he rewrote") the asp code for my gallery. Originally, the asp was creating 'crunched' versions of the original picture file. The made the thumbnails slow to download for anyone without a high-speed connection. What's more, it left me little choice in how the thumbnails looked, and I didn't like it. Now, however, the asp looks in a subdirectory for small-sized (and Matt - created) thumbnails, and uses them instead.

Next, I found the little line that I had to switch in order to make more than one line of thumbnails appear on the page at once.

Whew. I worked so hard. *grin*

THANK YOU BEN!!!!

Next, I set up a cafepress.com storefront. There's nothing in it just yet, but there will be soon, and hopefully it will bring me a couple extra bucks after the holidays (since I set it up too late to bring me anything for the holidays (jackass).

Okay, think that's about it for now,
~M.

been working on the new layout for the gallery of my web site - trying to make it look more like the rest of the site- and I think that it's there...

I just have to figure out some way of doing specifically defined thumbnails so that I can clean up the 'thumbs' that are auto generated - they're too big and clumsy.