1) Any models &/or MUA's in Philly tomorrow? I've a hankerin' to take a photo worthy of a Malice Mizer album cover. Drop me a line.

2) I've compiled all the Roswell/Cherie Priest stories together into a .pdf so y'all can read them without having to scroll around. They're quite wonderful.





Clickenzee to download the exciting .pdf compilation!


3) exciting things on the way. Rabbit Named Swine is at the printers. I'll put orders up maybe on the 4th or so.

4) While everyone was out seeing Avatar and Sherlock Holmes, trillian_stars and I journeyed to an empty theatre to see Me and Orson Welles which was fantastic. Beautiful performances, heart wrenching story. Two thumbs up.

5) There's wonderful news in the "85mm 1.8 Giveaway" front. More on that in a week or so.

Rock on.





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1) Had a meeting with LJ yesterday I'll type up my notes over the weekend for a progress report.

2) Since we got an enclosed back porch Roswell and Safetypin have taken up some sort of self-imposed guard duty that involves caterwauling to be let out every morning to they can check on the status of a) the bird invasion and b) whether or not that fiendish grey stray is walking through the yard (he's a rebel, I think they're secretly in love with him.) Well, since the snow fell this has been replace by c) complaining that we've opened the wrong door, they want the one without the snow please.

Finally yesterday Safetypin mustered up the nerve and went out for about 60 seconds, decided she didn't like the snow and came back in. Half an hour later Roswell worked up the nerve and walked out. The snow -- so fascinating! It must be examined!



After some time she did what any sentient, self-aware being would do and decided to use this medium for art -- to construct a cat of snow that would explain her view of the world, her emotions, her turmoil, her essence. After she constructed her art piece, she came back in -- satisfied, but a bit aloof after her triumph. We're having showings at 5:00 and 7:00 every night until it melts, with wine and cheese and cat treats.

Here is Roswell's snow sculpture:



I think it's beautiful. I'm going to get her a beret for Xmas.

There is a difference between true faith, and blind faith. Most don't realize when they've crossed from one to the other.

So yesterday, I got this email entitled "The world needs more Evans" and it was one of those chain letters, you know the sort, you see it on snopes.com all the time -- some kid wants to collect ten thousand post cards before he dies, a soldier requests prayers for a fallen comrade, but this one -- i knew this one was true because I'd helped start it -- someone had forwarded me a letter from Evan's mother -- you remember Evan, the kid who gave his life savings, $47.65 to City Kitties, the stray cat rescue group (Copy of Evans original heartwarming letter here.) This person was asking if I might help spread Evans altruism this holiday season by forwarding this letter to some people. How awesome that Evan's boomerang would pass by me again.

You know that person in the office who's always sending you the emails about missing people, places you should boycott, similarities between Washington D.C. and Sodom -- why not send them a copy of this -- you might see yourself on snopes.com in a week:

Subject: The World Needs More Evans

I can barely explain this, and I can't help but brag about it. Evan saved up his allowance for months and donated $46.75 to City Kitties, the cat rescue from which we got our adorable (if mischievous) Macha. He wrote them a sweet note. They posted it on their Facebook page, and it went viral. Kyle Cassidy matched Evan?s donation to City Kitties and suggested that others do the same. At last count, it had been “retweeted” (I vaguely understand that) 147 times. Bloggers are linking back to other blogs. Within hours, City Kitties received more than $400 in donations, and they are still coming. Other people have donated to rescues in Arizona, Tennessee, California, Toronto, and locations unnamed, in Evan?s honor. A woman in Austin, Texas made a video requesting donations for her local animal shelter, and credited Evan with inspiring her to take the time to do so. Sample comment from the blogs: “the world needs more Evans.” We agree. J

You can see his note here (and elsewhere!):

http://kylecassidy.livejournal.com/570781.html

http://katemckinnon.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/the-world-needs-more-evans/

http://kemidra.livejournal.com/581514.html

Forgive our bragging! We are just astounded!

Happy holidays, everyone.

Lisa, Brett, and Evan

(in other news, we have heat -- perhaps it's a reward from above or perhaps it's just competent furnace repair people.)

go be awesome.




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1hr. Mostly ArtRage, with the linework, lettering, and shadowing.

Now, who says I don't love you?

X-Posted to Artimancer.com

More playing in the snow with trillian_stars.






Supposedly the furnace guys are coming today to drag the old heater out through nine feet of snow and bring in the new one. They hope to have everything connected by Wednesday. But until then it's ... coooold in Casa del Milla but what's having no heat if not the opportunity for adventure? We got trillian_stars' 1930 Electrola and some holiday 78 rpm records and ensconced ourselves downstairs in the Rock Star Hotel and pretended we were on vacation in a cabin in the woods. Looking out the windows all you can see is snow where it's drifted five feet up against the side of the house.

trillian_stars made gingerbread, I made chili, the cats acted like they've never been downstairs, we had hot chocolate, I worked on final edits for the kids book, which I now think should be called "A Bunny Named Swine" rather than "A Rabbit Named Swine". We piled a lot of blankets together, it was fabulous. The furnace guys are going to end our pioneer adventure, but I'm glad we had the experience.




Whether or not your home is filled with heat this year end season, I hope it's filled with love (and kittens).



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A couple people wrote to ask about a new intrusive ad for Best Buy that has started running on Livejournal. I haven't seen it but apparently it takes up the whole screen and when it first started it auto-played audio (which is right up there with shooting someone's dog on my list of "thing's that it's uncool to do"). I asked LJ about it and heard back that it is indeed an official ad (some people were wondering if it was a virus or adware). They've removed the auto-play audio and added a button that is supposed to let you close it right away (rather than waiting for the animation to finish). There are no plans to stop running it as it's a big money maker. It should also not appear more than once every 24 hours.

I'm not sure if this is supposed to motivate people on the fence to upgrade to paid accounts, but I worry that people who are just starting out may be driven away because of it.

If you have questions or comments about this post them here and I'll forward them up the food chain. You may comment anonymously if you'd like.

Please repost as you see fit.

Thanks a bunch.

Your LJ user rep.

I think I have an unhealthy obsession with Trillian Stars.




Click to Embiggen



We're going into our second week with no heat at Casa Del Milla. It's not so bad, but we're a bit worried about the pipes freezing. The furnace fix-it people are supposed to be here tuesday to put in a new unit. Until then, we run around outside with no coats on and when we come back in, it feels a lot warmer than it did when we left.




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1) "and the winner is" -- cherie has judged fivecats the winner of the short fiction contest. Whee! Send me your address and I'll ship out your autographed Boneshaker. mcmatz wins my special auxiliary prize, send me your address for some unspecified goodies.

2) my 2xcreative project with Liz Afif is done! Now we need to figure out what to do with it. So I'm making a poll. It's 44 pages long and done up in full color, which makes it expensive to produce. *



Poll #1500598 Format for a Rabbit Named Swine
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 122

I would buy this book

Here are some excerpts so you can see how ... inappropriately awesome it is.





(This makes the perfect gift if you're the sort of aunt or uncle who likes to give things like fireworks and slingshots to the nieces and nephews or if you're the sort of person who likes having books on their coffee table that make guests go "What the heck is wrong with you? Really. Were you dropped on your head as a baby or something?")


* If you work for a company that prints booklets and you're going "I can totally print those better/cheaper" -- let me know.

Today's daily piece, done on and off while I watched a few shows and worked on other crap. I was initially going for something pseudo-Lovecraftian, but didn't like where it was going, so I decided to do something constructive with it, turning it into an exercise of light and shadow.



Somewhere under 2hrs ArtRage, then a few layers in Photoshop between filtering and shadows/highlights.

I plan on finishing one of the pieces I liked from earlier this week here in a bit, and will post it later. I usually upload some form of WIP via Twitter during the process, some (much?) of which doesn't make it here.

From City Kitties comes an amazing tail (yes tail) of a seven year old who saved up his allowance and gave everything he had, $46.75, to help homeless cats.



In Evan's honor I paypalled $46.75 to info@citykitties.org.

You can too.



And you can read City Kitties note about Evan here.

Hey folks,
Yesterday I got an email from a user saying there was a rumor that LJ was intending to make specifying gender on one's profile mandatory. Obviously there are various reasons why people either might not want that information known, or don't fit into one of the two categories commonly seen in such questions.

I wrote to LJ immediately asking about the rumor and advising that this wasn't a good idea without user input.

This morning I heard back with the Official Word and I'd be happy if you'd repost this or link to it to spread the news:

1) There are NO plans to make users specify gender in their profiles. The current options are "male/female/unspecified", this will remain.

2) The rumor started because on the current LJ BETA version (being tested now by some users) a programming error made the field mandatory, the same programming also broke profile editing. Users reported the bug to LJ and they are fixing the code along with other bugs people are discovering.

3) There will be a note with more details from the Customer Care team in the future.

4) That's all.

Thanks to everyone who emailed to let me know about this. If there are other questions or comments, please feel free to add them here and I'll pass everything along. I'm still working with LJ on the big status report but they're busy with the final software rollout for 2009, we'll have a meeting after that.

Your LJ user rep,

Kyle

Sometimes, as an artist, we do art that we just really don't care for. Today's daily practice (12/15) for me is one of those pieces.


(Click for full-sized image)

Just shy of an hour. ArtRage, with minor filtering/tweaking in Photoshop. I didn't like it 15 minutes into it, but rather than succumbing to my urge to scrap it, I brought it to this point. Didn't even bother thinking about the creature should have to accessorize it other than the minor tattooing. There reason it wasn't taken further was do to my being done with it.

The dailies from the 4 or so days previous (a couple of which have had WIP versions posted via Twitpic) are all things that I like, which I plan on spending a bit of time finishing. Not this one, though.

Still, I thought I should share, if nothing else than to give others insight to how my brain works at times.

X-Posted to Artimancer.com

That's right. I'm going to put you to good use. YOU CAN BE A PART OF MY ART.

As an artist, much of the time music is heavily played while I'm working on a piece of artwork. Different music can induce different moods, which in turn can be reflected in said artwork. I have a number of good Pandora stations for this, but there's a certain type of music that I'm lacking.

Some of you may have seen this "trailer" recently uploaded to YouTube:



This is an example of exactly the kind of music I'm looking for.

Sure, there's a list of a handful of the artists/songs (though the last may be a soundtrack?) that they sampled from the trailer:

AudioMachine - Akkadian Empire
Groove Addicts - Zero Hour
Audio Network - Mars
AudioMachine - Lachrimae (VadoskiN DNB mix)
Wild Rumpus Music - Blame It on the Falling Sky 2.0
John Murphy - The Last House On The Left SCORE

However, that's just the tip of the iceberg. I want epic, energetic, combat music. Instrumental, with perhaps a splash of intense choral vocals. Something that, when you close your eyes, your imagination is ripped wide, your body starting to pulse with subtle waves of adrenaline. Again, the video above is a good reference for the type of music I'm looking for.

Here's what I need from you:

Artist/Composer - Song

There is no limit to the amount of suggestions.

I'm going to take all of the info I'm given, and feed it into seeding a new Pandora station, for playing when working on certain pieces of artwork. Potentially, they may get played while gaming as well, but the art is the important part.

In turn, I'll present this to you, via Pandora station URL. I'll likely also list what songs work for me, versus what songs don't, so as to further refine the station, and to give you a better, more expansive idea of what I'm looking for.

Go. Go forth and bring me your lists. Actively shape and contribute to my creativity.

X-Posted to Artimancer.com

This week we'll be going over the entries in the write a story, win an autographed copy of Cherie Priest's Boneshaker novel contest. There are many awesome entries. I ought to put together a .pdf of all of them that people can download, print out, and read on the subway.

While no winner has yet been chosen, I wanted to point out the FREAKING AWESOME ILLUSTRATION OF STEAMPUNKROSWELL that mcmatz did:



sweet barking cheese. Friend this woman. Seriously. How could this awesome have escaped me for so long? I think there will have to be a special prize for this, it was so unexpectedly awesome.

(and if anybody else wants to do steampunk roswell illustrations, I will indeed put together a .pdf of all the stories for people to download and read on the train, and I'll give out other special prizes which will likely consist of a photographic print of something.)

rock on with your bad selves



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