The Delusional Delights of Doomz

Ah, I’ve finally managed to get a one-up on Rene! So here I am, finally having figured out how to use the Wordpress for BlackBerry app to put my posts for OLA together – this will let me get a lot more done while I’m out and about, which is awesome.

Current location: Yonge subway station, about to board the eastbound train to meet a friend. It’s packed, but not nearly as bad as the northbound train was.

No sketching today as of yet, but I reflected a bit upon the skills I’m developing at work and how they might be able to relate to OLA. The connections are loose at best at the moment, but work with me for a moment here.

Let’s take a look at what’s been going on with work lately:

*It’s a project management office, which means I’m further developing my skills in the area of project management, a skill we’ll need to efficiently and effectively get OLA off the ground
*mail merging: this will be a good skill to have if at some point we need to write standard letters, emails, other documents, etc. on a regular basis and we carry most of our OLA information in one place, such as a…
*database: I’ve been in charge of making sure that our Access database is up to date and that any changes are made to the database when necessary – when we get larger and need database maintenance to make sure that our records are intact, I’ll be there
*financial: there’s a pretty strong financial controllership component to my job as well, which will obviously come into play as OLA gets bigger and we want to do more with it

Hopefully they’re all skills I can use for OLA in good times and bad

In other news, since the MacBook Pro I want came up to $2850 (including AppleCare, the iPod Touch I’d need to buy for the student deal, student discount AND the gift cards I have – though I should re-calculate without the iPod Touch – AND maybe it’s a sign that I should wait until mobile quad-core tech is developed, since dual-core is SO 2001) and Apple disappointingly didn’t include a camera in their new iPod Touches as expected in their keynote release today (it went to the Nano? WTF!), I’ll be copping Drawn to Life and Locke’s Quest for the DS tonight (if I can find copies) in preparation for the release of Scribblenauts next Wednesday (which I’ve already paid for)! I’m looking forward to using all sorts of crazy item combinations to beat levels. I hope that this game will be as epic as the speculators make it out to be My DS hasn’t been getting too much time in the spotlight lately, so this’ll be a welcome change.

In other tech news for myself, I’ve gotta replace/fix my iPods (yup, plural – one original, then another for when the first broke… but I never bothered to fix the first one… oops). One’s got a busted screen and is still under warranty at Future Shop, so we’ll see how that goes; and for the other – wait for it – wait for itttt – I’ll be fixing MYSELF using this site:iFixit – I know, right?! Epic win! The Internet is making us self-sufficient when it comes to services that we’d often rely on experts to do for us. I’m hoping to keep one for myself and give the other to my girlfriend, but we’ll see how it all turns out

Babbling, babbling, babbling.

Oh noes, a serious part!

I’ve been told that I’m the kind of person who tends to always keep certain things to myself – no matter who it is, there’s always certain elements that I choose not to share. This is very true. I have a friend who would like to see me go into business for myself. While I don’t think this is a bad idea at all, to be honest, I’m scared. I don’t know if I’d do well. I don’t know if I’d ever get to a point where I’d consider myself successful at what I’d do. It would be a massive risk to take, and I don’t know if I’m ready for that. Though, truth be told, I can’t see with any clarity where the path in my life is leading me right now, so perhaps it’s a step that needs to be taken. Any thoughts?

By the way, I guess I ended up doing a sketch AFTER all:

2 Girls, 1 Sheet.

Right, so we just wrapped up a game of Catan: Cities & Knights and Sarah and I are walking home. Welcome to a random day in the life of Casey E. Palmer. Hope you enjoyed your stay!!!

Sincerely,

–case p.

Whassap y’all – I hope the long weekend was productive and that y’all weren’t relaxing TOO much! It’s just after Labour Day, and we all know what that means – it’s GO TIME! Back to school for some of us, the last cottage weekend for others, but for me , I took the name of the holiday rather literally and busted my ass on trying to get a lot out of the way.

This involved things such as:

• scanning in a ton of half-completed, likely-never-to-be-finished sketches
• uploading a number of photos that have just been sitting around doing nothing
• using FreeMind to develop a mind map of all the random ideas that I often seem to have floating around
• sketching like a fiend so that I could get rid of a ton of reference material that I seem to carry with me EVERYWHERE

And then Damn Terry Dam went and said, “Reference material is always a good thing to carry”.

Okay, yes, I totally agree with this statement, but what I think Terry didn’t realize is who exactly he’s talking to. When it comes to getting a job done, I tend to get a little OCD at times and really go over the top.

A couple of years ago, I’d put the word out to a few communities that I was part of online that I was looking for that I was looking for donations of old magazines so I could slice pages out of them for reference material. This was gonna be on TOP of the magazines I was already getting rid of for the same reason! I figured I’d just be able to draw things out one page at a time to improve my skill and the range of things I’d know how to draw.

Great plan, but I severely underestimated the response I’d receive from my peers!

This is the box that holds all the reference material I gathered from that exercise:

The Big Ol' Box of Reference Materials

So as you can see, it’s quite a bit. In fact, I had problems even managing to squeeze it all in said box. So I’ve got my work cut out for me as I’ve now gotten to a point where I’m actually attempting to go through the box and USE the reference. My method goes a little bit like this:

1. Grab handful of sheets from box
2. Stuff in whatever knapsack I’m carrying with me that day
3. Pull a sheet out on the subway/at the girlfriend’s/during lunch
4. Sketch like a madman
5. Recycle reference page
6. Return to step 3 until all sheets are gone
7. Then, return to step 1

Eventually, I will get through this box, and at that point, I’m hoping that my work will be far more awesome. But until then, I’ll follow Damn Terry Dam’s advice.

–case p.

It’s a question I need to ask myself sometimes – if I post in the forum, will it get enough attention? If I post it in my blog, will anyone respond to my thoughts?

But then I realize that spending too much time THINKING about something and not actually DOING it won’t do ANYONE any good, so I more or less go with whatever.

I won’t be nearly as eloquent or verbose as René is in my thoughts, but I figured I should pass along some thoughts and such that I’ve had as of late.

First off, a few nights back, I was discussing OLA and what it’s all about with my girlfriend, and she started doing some research on what other Ontario-based art societies do and how they go about conducting business. I included the links on this in an ongoing thread we have about developing our mission statement here:

http://ola.studiodyv.com/forums/topic.php?id=8

I’ll admit it. I have a strong habit of adding tutorials I find useful/interesting on DeviantArt into various collections, but I’m pretty horrible at actually USING them.

Macbook Pro fund = $1020, currently. Will increase further when I actually land a job! Soon enough, my pretty – soon enough

On that note, on week six of unemployment. I really need to find something – being left to my devices all day CAN’T be great for me.

Looking forward to the SSauga Sketch Session this Saturday – it’ll be my first, and I always enjoy being around other creative types – it really helps me get my think on with producing quality work.

Gotta keep that momentum flowin’.

Casey Palmer. I ain’t quittin’ now!

–case p.

Hey all,

So it looks like I have ample time on my hands to get dumpin’ all this stuff in my cranium into something a little more… tangible. Currently I’m over at the girlfriend’s scanning numerous docs in that won’t get looked at otherwise and just trying to sketch it up and write a little so that I don’t have so much physical clutter around me. In the name of streamlining, you’ll be seeing a lot of things point back to my site (to be resurrected soon), such as an embedded FriendFeed (which houses things such as my Flickr, Tumblr and Twitter accounts, etc.) and the blog I direly need to put together to express myself.

What am I hoping to get out of OLA? My previous experience with WordPress was when I was still working for the provincial government on a system that was introduced there, so I’ve already had an idea of the possibilities that can be presented with it. I’m looking forward to having a mini-community to really discuss what’s going on in my art life, share my sketches, get feedback from my peers, etc. I think we can make this place as good as we want it to be.

For now, you’ll have to make do with this vague sliver of my thoughts, but I intend to bring more.

In due time, my friends. In due time.

–case p.