As a kind of quick Merry Christmas to anybody reading this blog, I bring to you some of my latest art pieces. I'm thinking perhaps that an art section on the gallery page might be a good idea, but in the mean time you can enjoy it right here or on my deviantArt page. But, I digress.

I hope everybody had a Merry Christmas and will have an awesome New Year!

It's true; I have pulled an insane amount of all nighters this year and here I am doing it once again. I am currently at Orlando International where I await the departure of my flight at 6:23am, a little less than six hours from now. I was hoping to walk in here, dump off my luggage, and get through security right off the bat. However, good old Northwest Airlines has, yet again, left me with an unmanned counter. So, I am stuck with my twenty pound bag of clothing and vigilantly watching for the first signs of life at the counter.

Once again I have finished another two courses at Full Sail. This time was Design and Art Theory (DAT) and College Math (CMD) which was basically an Algebra course.

DAT was alright; it was essentially a traditional art course with design centric properties. Not being able to use my computer was difficult for me especially because pencils and paper don't have the Ctl+Z option. If you screw up, you've screwed up. Congratulations. However, I did pump out some decent stuff which I will show to you now.

This is my fice piece still life. I pushed it a little bit by counting the drum sticks as seperate objects, but meh. It went ungraded anyways (as did most things in that class).

This is the only piece I am truly proud of. I don't really have much to say aside from it was painted with acrylics on canvas and it was my first time doing any painting outside of using Crayola watercolors. The colors are a little dark because mixing paints is a bitch.

I did do several other pieces, but I don't have pictures of them and seeing as I'm at the airport I won't be taking pictures anytime soon.

Nothing really to report on about math because that's exactly what it was. What is sweet, though, is that I may pull an A out of that class which would thrill me to no end as I thought math was my suckiest subject.

So, there's my month on a nutshell. I'll probably post again once I'm in ol' Bartlesville. Until then, keep on peacin' out!

Not sure if that version number is correct or not, but it seems about right.

So, yes, here is the new design. It's not the same one I was working on back in October. No, it's better. I was actually going to use this for my final project in Fabian's class (NOS), but he borked his server and essentially axed the entire set up a blog requirement. I do owe him a lot for this design as it was his, shall we say, technique that inspired me. Design aside, this is the easiest transition to new design/engine I've ever had (thanks in no small part to the fact that I reused the current database structure).

That's all I'm going to blog right now. I'm going to be returning to good old Bartlesville for Christmas in a few days. Perhaps I'll write something then. In case I don't say it in time, I hope everybody has a Kick Ass Christmas!

P.S. Yeah, I added tagging. Maybe I'll add a tag cloud later.

We're almost down to one month before Christmas. THis means many different things to many different people. For some it means shopping, others getting together with others. For me, it means Christmas music. A lot of Christmas music. Of course, it also means that I'll be able to go see my folks again which is always sweet. And let's not forget the tantalizing aroma of sweet Christmas presents under the tree. And, speaking of aroma, and possibly the most important part of Christmas, the cookies. But, I suppose we must get through Thanksgiving first, which for me means being thankful for my brand new copy of Rock Band that I will be playing on that day.

But, holidays aside, I've been working on some very interesting things for school as of late. I've already given you a taste by showing my trailer project, but there are many other things I've been up to. Let's list them by class.

Designing Computer Graphics (DCG)

So far this class has been mostly about Illustrator and Photoshop basics, though they have touched on some good design practices (or not so good) by reviewing previous students works. However, there are three core projects we're working on (of which only two have been assigned so far). The first was a black and white logo.

Our second project was a set of three (or more) icons based around a theme. There were six possible themes to choose from, those being Olympics, zoo, theme park, library, airport, or musical styles. I'll let you figure out which theme I chose.

First I need to note that that is not my logo (it is the official logo of the 2012 Summer Olympic games). It's primarily there to help set the mood and show where I drew my inspiration from.

You may notice that both of these projects were in black and white (no colors or grays). This is a pretty ingenious call because by limiting us in the color department we are forced to put more emphasis on line width, stylization, and shadows and highlights. If something works well in black and white there's no reason why it won't work well in color.

Networks and Operating Systems (NOS)

As stated before the name of this class is a misnomer. They are actually in the process of converting it into Digital Storytelling, focusing more on getting a point across as opposed to the technical aspects of computers. I have to say of the two classes I am currently taking this is my favorite not necessarily because of what we do but because of our instructors, Fabian Socarras and Jacob Kaplan. It's difficult to explain how there two teach (if indeed they are really teaching at all), but it is certainly the most entertaining course and, so far, the most informative.

But, that aside, I've been doing some pretty cool stuff here as well. After the trailer project we all made podcasts (I will not be posting mine, thank you very much). Our last project was to prepare a Keynote presentation trying to convince our target audience of why we needed something and, subsequently, why they should purchase it for us. I did mine on why I needed a Nintendo 64. I presented in front of my lab group and Fabian and Jacob invited themselves in as presenters which was cool. Will you ever see this keynote? Perhaps, perhaps not.

Our next project is something that, for me, is pretty easy stuff. We are to set up and design a blog using Wordpress. To make things challenging for myself I asked Fabian if I could write mine from the ground up as opposed to using Wordpress. While he gave the nod of approval, he seemed dubious as to whether or not I could pull it off within the time frame and meet all the criteria. Considering most of my back end is already in place, and with the addition of a couple of new modules I pounded out tonight, I foresee no problems. However, it turns out this will be a group project so I may just stick with Wordpress so as not to make myself appear elitist to my fellow classmates. No, that can wait until my official web classes a few months down the road.

That's about all for now seeing as I need to get to bed so I can be up at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. Here's hoping I have afternoon classes AND labs next month.

Firstly, I am not dead and as such I hope that everybody had a good Christmas. Secondly, I want to say that the comics should resume as usual in the coming week. And finally, I want to make a plug for my new book:

<center><embed src="http://www.smoke420.com/plugins/for-dummies-cover-generator/dummiebook.swf?h=&t=Shitting in the Toilet&b=Now you can do it too!&a=By Big Kid&d=Myspace Layouts&myw=401.85&myh=505.2" quality="high" wmode="transparent" width="409.85" height="513.2" name="For Dummies" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="samedomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /><br><font size="-2">Myspace Layouts</font></center>

Happy New Year!

Before I delve into this stuff I just want to say I hope you all had a good Christmas :-).

Well, Christmas paper shredding has come and gone once again. All that excitement and anticipation over with the course of a couple hours. Ah, but a pretty sweet Christmas it was. So, I bet the question on the tip of your tounges is "What'dya get?". Here's the run down: glass chess set (frosted even :-D), laptop backpack, CF card reader/writer, a "Pedro's Got your Back" and a nice flannel shirt, some money and a gift card, a Dave Berry book, and the piece de resitance: my own cell phone :-D. Quite a cool one at that. Basic, but it suits my needs. Actually, truth be told, it does some stuff that my parents fancier phone doesn't do, namely the ability to use SMS web services (such as google). Quite sweet, quite sweet.

The last few days I've been delving into GBA dev again and something seems to have finally clicked. I understand how loading sprites works and all that malarkey and so I've begun my GBA Tetris Attack clone. And actually it's coming along quite nicely. Debugging is a pain in the but since I don't have a debug console or files to write ciritcal values to, but I'm chugging along all the same.

Tomorrow, if I haven't mentioned already, I go to discuss my future at Wal-Mart (Christmas Eve marked my last day in layaway). I'm not sure where I'll end up exactly, but at this point in time cart pusher seems most likely. Now I know I was complaining earlier, but I've done it a couple of times since and I'll tell you that being able to use the QuickCart makes it a heckuva lot easier. My other option is cashier, but dislike that even more (though if it was back in electronics I might reconsider). I personally wouldn't mind working in claims or as an overnight stocker (both of which I have done). Whenever there was nothing to do in layaway after closing I'd usually get sent to toys to help them stock and I must say it was a lot of fun (I did chemicals one night and I liked that too). So we'll just see tomorrow (and I'll post something about it).

Ah, but now it is getting late and I've got presents to play with (maybe I'll go blow Jeff away in a game of chess). Stay tuned for an interesting video clip from yesterday morning. It's absolutely hilarious. Cheers!

Twas some days before Christmas and all through the house,

not a creature was stirring except for the dudeon his laptop.

Doesn't rhyme, but I don't care. I'm sitting here in our new living room lit up tree in front of me and a fireplace full of stockings to my right (picture coming soon). Now this in and of itself is a nice feeling but having my laptop and posting here while doing it makes the feeling cooler ;-). But anyhoo...

Christmas is is coming and we've been doing all the usual: making cookies, listening to Christmas music (even while I'm at work :-D), buying gifts, etc. I'd say that we're pretty much ready. The only bad thing is that Dad found the key to the freezer and I must go cookieless until Christmas Eve :-(.

Things in layaway have slowed down considerably. Thursday and Friday were a nightmare but since I couold count on my hands and toes how many people have come through to get stuff. Sunday night I began learning the how to operate the register and I'm pretty sure I don't want to do that (for reasons I don't want to go into again :-P). On Monday I'll be discussing my future at Wal-Mart with a manager and depending on if there's any other spots open or not I'll either be a cashier or a cart pusher. If I could do cashiering back in electronics I'd probably leap on it, otherwise I'll probably push carts (unless overnight socker is available). But anyways, it looks like I'm not even going to get laid off before coming back (I must have made a good impression).

But now I must go and make another attempt at finding the freezer key (or something :-P). Merry Christmas :-D