"Many answers you shall receive, if comment you will" - Yoda

Comment and I will...

1. Tell you why I friended you.
2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a color, a photo, etc.
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
6. Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.
7. In return, you must post this in your LJ.


Unrelated, I'm finishing work at school in order to, hopefully, graduate. I need to petition the Dean, but from what I understand talking to my counselor today, it should go through well. Things will work out, I hope :)

Mistral had me as her chosen for the art exchange over on Rashan's forum, and she presented me with this gorgeous piece of art:


Raindrops Keep Falling... by ~Dragonmistral on deviantART

I had the laptop out in the garden while watching Tanis in his run, I think he likes the art too, he tried to nibble the keyboard :D

In other news, I'm an auntie again. Findlay made an appearance this morning and both him and mummy Emma are doing fine. Anthony and I are going to head over to see them all on Saturday.

Comment and I will...

1. Tell you why I friended you.
2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a color, a photo, etc.
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
6. Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.
7. In return, you must post this in your LJ.

CONGRATULATIONS, SHADDAM!!!!


soulgem passed his Ph.D. defense today! Wooo!!! I made him a Lost cake to celebrate, but I'll have to post pictures of that later.

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Poll #1186407 Oh, no, another naming poll....
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

What should I name my new Mack Snow leopard gecko?

Just...don't ask about that last option. o.O

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Well, it looks like the initial plans for my roomies for anthrocon are falling through so now I've got a room all to myself.

So, question is, does anyone need a room and want to stay with me?

I've got a king size bed in the main hotel, so there's floor space and/or bed space if you're comfortable XD

And please note this is not first come first serve >> I hate being picky but I would like to stay with those I'm closer and more comfortable to so I will pick such people XD; I'll let everyone know asap, I hate leaving people hanging.

Drop a comment or send me a note if you're interested~

Wow. Today has been a very...um...interesting day. :D

Bible study went fine (it was at 9:15 this morning...ugh). I got four hours of sleep after playing EVE all night. After that, since I was already out running around, I decided to get some stuff done. I stopped by the art store to see if they had some drawing pads I've been looking for (no dice), then I hemmed and hawwed for a while before deciding to go ahead and run all the way up to Wal-Mart to pick up some potting soil and a toothbrush. On the way back, I saw this place that sold thin, sandstone slabs of rock. Hmm. Those would be awesome to paint pretty pictures on! So I went back and picked up several small slabs and one big one. I haven't painted in oils since I moved down here; I'm hoping this will spur me to try painting again. Then I went to the bank and off to the reptile store to grab chirps and squeaks for my hungry reptiles.

Well, I always look at all the pretty critters while I'm waiting to be helped, and last time I was in there I looked at their baby leopard geckos. They looked like Mack Snows. Snows are geckos where they've bred out the yellow color, leaving the lizards only black and white. (For reference, here is a Mack Snow, as opposed to the normal coloration. Zathras is a mix of normal and Blizzard.). I love Mack Snows. They're beautiful. So I asked. The really pretty Snow was male, and I can't put two males together or they'll fight. I was sad and didn't get any. But today, I remembered the owner said they had a couple Snows. So I asked again, and yes, indeed, they had one female. I couldn't resist. And she was adorable. And I miss having two geckos. So...I...um...bought her.

I put her in with Zathras, but he started acting funny and vibrating his tail (which is leopard gecko speak for, "Hey, baby. Your patterns are so gorgeous, I spotted you from across the room. Wanna go somewhere more...private?"). She's way too young, so I'm keeping her separate for now.

( Beware: Pictures of Utter Cuteness. )

In the meantime, I'd been feeding Irulan, who was so hungry she snapped at me several times while I was trying to get one of the mice out of the paper sack. One time, it caused me to jump back from the tank, and a mouse went flying. I spent the next ten minutes chasing a mouse around my apartment. -.- I finally caught it behind the couch (with a butterdish)...whereupon I happily fed it to Irulan. Take that, Mr. Squeaky!

Anyway, I'll probably post a poll later with possible names for my new little gecko. I haven't come up with very many so far, and I'm not really liking any of them. So I'll take suggestions, if y'all have some. So far, she's very active and only somewhat skittish, but I haven't had her long enough (obviously) to know much more about her disposition.

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Biiiiiig art post, as promised!

( 16 )

Thanks for looking! <3

It's always a little scary buying flowers for Mother's Day when you can't actually see the flowers you're buying. ^..^

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Finally finished up the fae dragon designs for Flight Rising. After taking 3 months off :-/ These uh... don't fit so well on the page together, but oh well :-/

Hehe, my lovely sis was kind enough to get a sweet pic done of us ^_^ Thank you so much, Ria :) *hugs*

Has a whole month past and I haven't posted anything here yet? D:! How embarrassing..

Sorry guys, I'll try really hard to do so this weekend. <3

The cute and cuddly animal spree is almost at an end. Bec recommended to me that I should do a baby lolrus in a bukkit ^^ We'll see =3



Promise more dragons are on the way >.> And they shall have only one highlight to their eyes!

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ~

Stole this from wolfyisms

I've had a recent obsession with the idea and ramifications of the modern discovery of fractals. Fractals are complex quadratic polynomials that express their boundaries infinitely. When graphed, no matter how small a window you attempt to view the boundary at, there is always more detail unveiling itself, to infinity. However, in these things, I think, a picture is worth a thousand words. Fractals could never be explored before the advent of computers, which could quickly graph thousands and millions of points. Now, however, they can be graphed to such a scale as to understand what they look like, fundamentally, even if we do not follow them to infinity:



They are incredibly beautiful, and yet, what we observe is not a concrete geometric shape, like a circle or a triangle, but we observe infinity. The basic equation for the Mandelbrot set and the Julia sets is that of F(z)=Z^2+C where changing the constant changes the design. All the numbers that escape to infinity are colored black while all the numbers that are 'bounded' inside of infinity can be graphed. Amazingly, we see self-similarity, when it is graphed--that is the original figure recurring in such a way as we can identify a similar pattern. It is not exactly the same, and yet, our mind can associate a kind of likeness/order to it. Amazingly, we have what some people have called the fingerprint of God--a new way of understanding geometry that opens the door for an incredible amount of potential understanding. We see fractals in nature in the form of clouds, ferns, trees, seashells--all these things which we would consider most beautiful in nature, by their innately self-repeating mathematical design. Mathematics is beautiful--for in it we see the logic behind the formation of the Universe.

Likewise, some contemporary composers have brought 'fractal music' to life. I've been listening to it for the last 30-40 minutes and it astounds me and a way that is very difficult to express. Unlike so much of modern classical composition, which is discord, or unbounded (free-form), or comes in a form that is unagreeable to me (Serialism, for instance), you can listen to this music and you intuitively feel both the chaos and the order of the piece, in a way where both are intertwined in a most provocative manner. The music is incredibly intelligent and mathematical...and yet, not pointlessly so--there is something that is communicated in a most bizarre fashion. You have melody and harmony that has order, and yet it's not ordered in the way we expect most music to be. Truly bizarre stuff that I need to learn more about.

http://bowerbird-studios.com/aicaramba/media/anemonae.mp3

http://bowerbird-studios.com/aicaramba/media/windmetal.mp3

What to make of this? I'm not sure--but it feels very profound, in some way that's hard to identify. Thoughts, ideas?

Watched two very excellent movies this weekend. The first, in theaters, is Iron Man. Usually I don't go for comic books because I think the whole get hit by gamma rays/radioactive spiders/whatever and then go save the world plot line is cliche and boring, but Iron man really surprised me. It delivered on every level--and finally the action/cg special effects did not overwhelm the story line and character development. The characters are very well acted and sympathetic and there is enough moral criticism of weapons manufacturing that I felt there to be some higher/philosophical substance to the film other than 'I'm the good guy, I'm going to kick evil in the face!' The reviews are almost all positive, and the movie pushes 91% on rotten tomatoes. I'm generally not into the super hero genre, but this movie impressed me as legitimately good on every count. There's enough intrigue, action, symbolic themes, good (not cheesy or vulgar) humor, character development, and thoughtfulness to give it the depth needed to maintain my interest. I definitely suggest watching it!

The other movie is the late 80s (I believe) film titled The Mission. The film impresses me as so unlike anything that I've seen in the recent developments of our American culture. It is so vibrantly human, and beautiful. Just watch as Robert de Niro's character, a mercenary and slaver who killed the only thing he loved, his brother--in a fit of jealous rage, only to find his redemption with the Amazon Indians whom he had previously seen only as a commodity to exploit. He joins the Jesuit mission there, becoming a priest with Jeremy Irons, and seeks to maintain this meaningful way of life in the face of European political affairs.



Everything he had known all his life was vacuous and unfulfilling--a life devoid of meaningful industry and a shared life and vision with others. Redemption has always been a favorite thematic theme of mine. It was wonderful to be able this theme and its implications in our lives to with my friend Michael, whom I have had some distance with of late. He is a new Catholic convert and I made some aggressive challenges to his faith, which put us on ends, unfortunately, for a while. He came by to visit fairly late last night and talked with me about the movie, which was really nice, as I hadn't been able to talk with him for some time in any meaningful fashion. We talked about sins in our lives, compared our pasts and our thoughts for the future.

Among the topics we were able to visit was that of human beauty--as depicted by films like the mission and as depicted by the American beauty industry. Recently I found out that the images put forth by the beauty industry are actually fake. Models actually look like very normal people when they aren't glamorized by makeup, professional hairstyling and photo-manipulation. So much of our conception of human beauty is actually fraud. It is fantasy....and yet most of us don't even realize it because it happens in such a subtle, discreet kind of way. We simply soak in these images and don't even consider if they are real or not. So Mike and I were discussing how many people, especially women, live their lives in fear when they cannot attain an unrealistic standard of beauty. Try looking up what models and celebrities look like without the makeup and the glamor and you begin to see real people, just like anyone else.



Every human being, barring extreme deformity, has the potential to become physically beautiful. It take a completely different focus than the one our culture seems to steer us towards, however. Health and joyfulness are the two main factors. Healthiness requires a diet free of preservatives, processed sugars, disgusting low-grade meats, inorganic salts and toxic substances. It requires a diet high in organic fruits and vegetables. Likewise it requires exercise, even if it's just walking regularly, and an environment that is vitalizing, with good aesthetic awareness and no debilitating molds and excess of dust and the like. Thinking optimistically is thinking healthily. So is regular mental exercise as well as meditative, centering activity. Regular sleep and positive, life-giving social interaction will shape you into a beautiful person. I've manifested such tremendous changes in myself through adherence to the reality of human beauty...and I hope to manifest more of it as time progresses--no makeup/fakeness required. I hope to write more on this when I next have the time. People have been so divorced from the verisimilitudes of beauty that they have no idea how to find it. I guarantee it's there, however, and that anyone who wants to seize the abundance of power that arrives with the right choices can and will find it if that's what they want to pursue :)

And done! I think he's going to make a great sticker. If there's enough interest, I may do a tee too, but sadly it won't be ready in time for Anime Central :-(


A couple of people have wondered why I sometimes throw a thick border around my art. Usually it's because it's intended for something, in this case a sticker. Dye cutting to the exact edges of the design itself would be very difficult and pricey. The thick border gives it some leeway. Same with certain tee designs.

More sickeningly adorable sticker designs.

The goal to be sought is a world where well-being extends to all in the fullest, richest way possible... brought about by a mode of creative ethical living that includes all of us as moral equals, inspiring and uplifting us all, nourished by the creative energy we experience as spirituality..."

~ Martin Prozesky ~