Yonaka-Yamako

Over the weekend, I had the desire to do a little purge of items in my "sewing" room, formerly the dining room. In the midst of going through cardboard projects, bits of fabric and unusual papers I had collected long before moving to this tiny splat of dirt in the middle of Georgia, I found a large envelope with a doodle on it. I was addressed to Comico and that put it somewhere in the middle to late 80s. I'm reasonably Comico and Muu don't exist anymore and I wondered what I had packed in there and sealed it up so well.I just spent a few hours looking back at things I had do, much of which I remembered but thought I had packed somewhere else.

With my spawn looking over my shoulder with some curiosity, I lead her down memory lane. Art I had done for companies in Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills. Work I did as I planned clothing and items for Historic reenactors in Virginia Beach and Williamsburg. Dothans who were living history interpreters at the Va Bch Marine Sciences Museum who needed clothes of the period of contact 1509.

There were drawings in pencil and ink I did for a couple of gaming companies long defunct and some personal pieces I did of some characters I played in some table top games. All of this brought back a lot of fond memories and some not so fond. I think I saw 1987 on a few of those drawings. I might go and dig out the plate scanner and get them digitized.I might even post a few here. It will depend on my mood and how far I want to totally screw up how people see my artly reputation.

I suppose given how I don't post since Legacy was switched to Eclipse, it wouldn't matter what anyone actually thought of what I posted these days....

Well that is all I have to say.

NEVER FORGET.

I can't say the direction Eclipse is going is an improvement. Not even if I were in a state of extreme delirium. Inane activities to placate the kiddies because we don't want them to feel unloved. Has anyone not noticed the inexorable slide into drivel this place has gone?

Ooh... Let's take Eclipse to the bottom of a steaming mass of less than undesirable pre-compost! We'll make it a game and give them distractions that will turn their attention away from us while we totally jack the site to infantile and put even more useless crap to gum it all up further and make it the social media site for imbeciles.

Yes. Let's play a game.

This game is called "let us take a once vibrant and active multi-disciplinary art site with active groups that shared interests, helped each other with tutorials and contests, and encouraged each other to become more creative to a total shit hole in under a year". It'll be great! Really!

They forced Eclipse on us in May. Whittled away at Stash. Turned off some basic but reasonably intuitive navigation and added a whole new degree of complexity and had us chasing our collective tails trying to figure out where things went. Oh don't bother. It wasn't efficient so we got rid of it. Ha ha.

We complained and got a stern talking to like we were the children (that paid for CORE) who needed the reprimanding. What we said didn't count because we were in the minority.

Does no one remember that part?

Let us help you in making a portfolio they said. But the art gets hosted on another site entirely. WIX is the site. Why not dA? Shut up! You don't have the right to complain! We know better than you lesser creatures.

I've been on dA for 14 years. Let that sink in. I've kept my peace for the most part. Now I am part of that "noisy minority" and have been since the first of the No Eclipse move. If you agree that this has gone too far and resulted in an experience less than satisfactory especially if you PAID for Core, please join me by commenting below this journal and start start your own. Link to in your comment. Let us show WIX/dA/Eclipse that we are not a few disgruntled here and there but actual users of this site. Please encourage your friends who are here but no longer active to comment below. Let everyone know how long you have been part of this community.

Thank you.

While touting all the things that have been added to Eclipse, much of the functionality many of us enjoyed under legacy dA, flawed as it was, is still not there.

I checked my stats and found I had one visit and that came from the U.S. .Wow... That's pathetic. I still have no idea when I got these visitors or who they were. I see I have well over 500 deviations, even after the purge to streamline and clean up the gallery. I shouldn't have anywhere near that many. This leaves me suspicious as to where those are hidden.

Can't seem to find the llamas. I don't see any offerings for the points for llamas "game". The point system is borked and if I wanted points, I have to buy them. Eclipse is still a steaming pile of crap code that should have been more thoroughly tested before pushing it onto us.

Sure, the kiddies who run about posting their Poke/digi/Yugi offerings are more into the digital scene. With few exceptions the old schoolers who actually worked in traditional mediums seem to be fewer and fewer.

Notes to others is harder to find so communication has become even more limited.

I've given this site to win me over since the manditory move to Eclipse and I am still finding it sorely wanting. I am looking at the twilight of a site I had enjoyed using for well over a decade and the light is fading fast.

It's time for me to learn how to make a website and turn my attentions to that.

There was a brief lull in activity with the ongoing restoration of the Singers and puzzle boxes.

The computer had its fans finally give up the ghost so it became the focus of my attention. After 3 days down, I got new fans, blew everything out and vacuumed the dust bunnies that managed to escape the blow outs, checked on the DVD R/W (another component I need to replace), got all the cables and leads gathered together and wrangled into a sensible bundle, and had this computer up and running once more. I have more illumination in the tower than I have outside the tower. That's so sad... LED lit fans.... If one could see my face, I think it would speak volumes

Cleared off the desk, though that won't last long but it sure is nice to have all that elbow room to type in. It's too early in the morning for me. I'm still trying to knock the sleep out of my eyes. The forecast is 50% chance of rain and it is dark out there. I could stand to just sleep, snooze, and nap the rest of the day waking only to do the bathroom or possibly eat. Yeah, this day is just one of those sleep in days. It's not helping the temps are starting cooler than we've had but it's fall and that's what happens.

On to the Singers and puzzle boxes.

I have 4 puzzle boxes now. Three in the golden oak and one in dark oak. All are lined now in that lovely deep wine red velveteen. In order to complete them, I need to mark the location of all the mounting furniture and attach them, get the accessories in place and see what I'm missing. That shouldn't take that long but I'm hesitant. Maybe it's because I'm sleepy. Maybe it's because I'm not motivated. Maybe I'm afraid I'll screw something up. Maybe it's all of the above. Meh.

I will get them completed. After all, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

On a more creative note, I looked at this software called Snowflake Pro. It's a tool one can use for writing fiction. Believe it or not, I occasionally tickle the keyboard and attempt to be witty and entertaining as I stumble over words and sentences in this mad dash to fumble a story out of thin air. November and NaNo is a spectacle to behold with me. Sometimes it goes swimmingly, but mostly it's floundering and messy. I hit 50K words and I am done with it. Am I finished? Not even close.

At one time, I took NaNo seriously, but lately, I toss a sentence or 3 down and then copy/paste that to the 50K mark. Maybe, I'll try to write a story in there but mostly, it's a dud. Whatever seed of a story had been planted and germinated dies a quiet death and lays in tatters on my desktop sitting in a folder reminding me I failed at bringing it to life. But... I got my 50K words out so that's a partial victory.

Anyway, I digress. Snowflake Pro is a software tool based on the premise that all stories are broken down to its most primitive structure. A triangle. Another triangle is overlaid on top and inverted to create a 6-pointed star. You build the story by adding more and more details.

It seems to be a JAVA driven program that helps develop a story by building it from the most basic of details to something complex and compelling. The task tabs keep you on track while you build a synopsis, expand on that , add characters, scenes, and motivations. By the time you complete the task tabs across the top of the window, you have a pretty heavily detailed start to the story.

Along the bottom, there are three buttons covering covering Audio Lecture, Lecture Notes, and Help Notes. These can be pulled up at any time during the creative process. It actually seems to do a pretty good job of making the writing process less of a chore that sucks the life out of you if you aren't a natural writer.

I'll pass on a heads up. This program needs JAVA 1.8 at minimum. That's where I fumbled the first time and had to go installing the 32 bit version onto my machine. Once I got the JAVA installed, Snowflake Pro runs like a dream. It's reasonably intuitive and once you play with it a little, it makes the writing process almost painless. Also, you can bounce about within the program adding as you need to to make the story more compelling.

It even creates a Proposal letter once you complete all your tasks. That is pretty cool in my thinking.

Wow. I'm finally awake. It only took some coffee, moving about, and Kino and Sherbert to have a half dozen tiffs in the writing of this journal. Nothing like 2 cats having a disagreement to wake a body up especially when both are looking for attention under my chair and legs. -_-U

I have visions of shredded appendages, tattered flesh, and blood everywhere when they want attention at the same time. The joys of working out of a home office...

So... Computer things, some restoration work, and a hint of writing to round out this update. Time to post this and check my emails before I get bogged down into something else...

I need another cup of coffee.