October 31, 2016 (Mon)

A little bit of paid work.  Nothing creative, other than thinking about stuff. 

Got new glasses today...amazing what a new pair of lenses can do.  I feel like my eyes are now HD!

Hopefully, I can do some creative work tomorrow.

Speaking of which, see you then.

October 30, 2016 (Sun)

Spent most of the day either sleeping or resting.  So, all in all, not a bad day.  No creative or paid work done, of course.

See you tomorrow.

October 29, 2016 (Sat)

A bit of paid work today, the usual Saturday system overview stuff.  Still, it went smoothly.

Nothing much in the creative work area.  Took some photos of the foliage.

Tired most of the day, but overall a pretty good day.

See you tomorrow.

October 28, 2016 (Fri)

Some decent paid work today, and a decent paycheck as well. 

Only a little creative work--a cartoon in PhotoShop for a website--but it was fun to do something.

Starting to feel a little less sick, so that's good as well.

All in all, not a bad day.  See you tomorrow.

October 27, 2016 (Thurs)

Some decent paid work, frustrating but ultimately finished to everyone's satisfaction.  (I hope.)

No real creative work, but I can feel the urge returning, slowly.  I still ache all over and feel pretty lousy, but my brain is starting to get unfrozen.

Anyway, not a bad day.  See you tomorrow.

October 26, 2016 (Wed)

Some paid work today, largely annoying because of the long-distance factor.

Car repair was a lot less than I expected, so that was good.

Very little creative work.  Opened up PhotoShop and did a spot of work.

See you tomorrow.

October 25, 2016 (Tues)

Some paid work, not much, but every bit helps.

No creative work.  Still feel too lousy to really think about things, though I have been doing a bit of thought.  Just not enough to spark me to do anything.

I'm sure that will pass in time.  And I'm okay to wait.

See you tomorrow.

October 24, 2016 (Mon)

Some paid work today, with an awful lot of driving.

No creative work.  I'm still in too much discomfort.  I'm also starting to get a little bored with the idea of the Flash project.  I guess we'll see what happens when I start feeling better.

See you tomorrow.

October 23, 2016 (Sun)

Nothing creative done today.  In fact, today was mostly a recovery from yesterday.  You'll note there's no entry for Saturday.

Basically, late at night, I came home and immediately lost my keys.  I scoured the cold, dark ground for them for hours.  The weather was cold and I was under-dressed, so I was quickly succumbing to cold and exhaustion.

Finally, with the help of a friend, the keys came back and I was able to go inside.  This was early in the morning, I was cold and tired, so I've spent most of the day resting.

Let's hope tomorrow is better.  See you then.

October 21, 2016 (Fri)

A bunch of paid work.  Not, I suspect, enough to counter the vast bills I have, but...

No creative work done.  In a sense, I wish I cared more about this.  But things are as they are.  Okay, I thought about what needs to happen next.  Maybe that's something.  Maybe.

Made a great sauce to go with the stir-fry I did yesterday.  And yes, the two of them together were delicious.

Sometimes, enough is indeed enough.  At least, that sure sounds wise, doesn't it?

See you tomorrow.

October 20, 2016 (Thurs)

Nothing creative done today.  Thought about the Flash project, and got a perk or do that I should continue...nothing like "You MUST do this" but more "Wouldn't it be fun?"

Some good paying hours today.  Always good that, and the promise of some tomorrow as well.  Since my car's brakes are making a horrible noise...oh God, it just seems that it's never going to end, is it?  I make two steps forward, the world hurls me six steps back.

For the first time in...well, several years at least, I cooked a meal.  Stir fried a bunch of vegetables and a lot of chicken.  Then I was too tired to eat it.  So into the refrigerator it went, for tomorrow.

Tomorrow I'll make the sauce for it, and it'll be great. 

Keeping positive.  Boy is that a full time job, with no benefits.

Anyway, see you tomorrow.

October 19, 2016 (Wed)

Nothing creative done today.  Got some things (video files) organized and thought about replication, and made some plans...but, you know, nothing you could really say was "accomplished."

Only a little paid work.  As always, worrisome. 

Bought some actual groceries to wok.  And, yeah, bought the usual.

See you tomorrow, unless luck strikes and we all die in a cosmic catastrophe.  And yeah, no one is counting on that.

October 18, 2016 (Tues)

Nothing creative done today--more cataloging of videos on various hard drives.  Still, it's nice to (occasionally) do something that really doesn't require a lot of brainpower, just give the old head a rest.  Still, I hope to get back into the swing of things in a day or so. 

Only a little paying work.  Somewhat worrisome.  Oh well.

See you tomorrow.

October 17, 2016 (Mon)

Some decent paid work today.  Nothing spectacular, but whatever bars the door.  Especially since the brakes are making an appalling noise.....

No creative work today.  Spent the off hours making more backup copies of video files.  Because, darn it, I ripped those disks, so I should have those disks.  (No thanks to Apple.)

It was nice to find that I had most of what I thought I'd lost (more than I originally thought, too--thanks, aging brain).  Despite the games of hard drives and backup programs, I do seem (tentatively) to have what I thought I got.  With any luck, in a few days I can stop worrying about this stuff and get back to some real work.

See you tomorrow.

October 16, 2016 (Sun)

Nothing creative today, except for some photography.

Not a bad day, but not that great either.  Okay.

See you tomorrow.

October 15, 2015 (Sat)

Nothing creative done today.  Not really expecting anything, so that's fine.

Frustrating work stuff from yesterday was resolved, somehow.  I'll have to call boss at some time to see what he did...hopefully, he did something, because if it all just worked, well, that's a problem.

Did the 5 mile walk, which wasn't as fun as it could have been, due to unseasonally hot weather.  But did it anyway.  Also, paid the rest of the month's bills.  So there's that.

On the video copy thing (from yesterday)...taking some radical action. 

(I hope!)

Thanks for visiting, see you tomorrow.

October 14, 2016 (Fri)

Nothing much creativity-wise...a quick PhotoShop image for the group. 

Slow and frustrating day at work.  An excellent paycheck, however.

I've been digitizing DVDs and Blu-Ray disks to hard drives, which I have scattered all over, and I decided it's a good idea to coordinate those, so I know what's on what disk.  Also, I want to have redundancy on everything, since hard drives fail.  So that may be fun.

Anyway, that's it for today.  See you tomorrow.

October 13, 2016 (Thurs)

Some decent paid work, still not enough to pay my bills, but better I suppose than nothing. 

A bit of creative work, adding some more audio to Part Three.  I finally found the "sweet spot" for the audio problem yesterday...turns out, that if I put the sound about a second past the video, it lines up.  Not sure why that bit alone has problems, but it's the journey as well as the destination.

I added some more audio to Part Three, and then...the bits I had trouble with were off again, in the opposite direction.  So I lined them up in the timeline, and lo and behold, they worked as they should.  Not sure why this was a problem in the first place, but I guess Flash, like any other program, has its quirks and those must be cottoned to.  Or worked around.  Or something, until they decide they've had enough fun and will allow you to do what you wanted to do.

Anyway, see you tomorrow.

October 12, 2016 (Wed)

More paid work today than in Monday and Tuesday combined.  Still not enough.  Time to intensify the search, and lower expectations.  I won't survive on this.

Some actual creative work today.  Just adding some audio to Part Three, but it's surprising how much audio adds to a scene.  A bit of frustration, as the frame match-up for one audio bit, and one animation bit, were perfect in the timeline, but off in the preview.  Not sure what could cause that, but I'm too tired to try and troubleshoot. 

Nice meeting tonight with other creative types. 

All for now, see you tomorrow.

October 11, 2016 (Tues)

Some creative work done--I actually got a bit of fire that I liked!  True, it was done in Flash so it looks kind of cartoony (a lot cartoony, actually) but I like it.  Did some flickering on the ground as well, though that was created in PhotoShop and animated in Flash.

Practically no paid work today.  This is worrisome. 

Still, I feel that I'm (slowly) making progress.  I'm going beyond the things I already know how to do, and that's got to be good.

See you tomorrow.

October 10, 2016 (Mon)

Only a little creative work done, but I liked it and I did it fairly quickly.  It also involved new techniques--shape tweens--so overall, I'll take it.

Nothing much else.  Paid work has fallen off dramatically, which is not good.

See you tomorrow.

October 9, 2016 (Sun)

No creative work today.  Pretty much nothing today.  Another five mile walk, and that's it.

See you tomorrow.

October 8, 2016 (Sat)

No creative work today, not that I was expecting to do any.  Saturdays seem to be a day of rest.  Which is fin--I'm finding my limitations to be more a source of frustration rather than stimulation.

Went for a five-mile walk for the first time in weeks.  Then did the lawn, and later took some photos.  Nothing much, though I did find a pile of old power poles and got some interesting objects.

That's about it.  See you tomorrow.

October 7, 2016 (Fri)

Practically no paid work, which is very worrisome. 

Felt sick all day, probably from drinking too much, but then...I didn't drink that much.

As for creative work, only a little.  Refined part three a bit more, then tried to find out how to animate fire in Flash.  Turns out, most people use frame-by-frame.  Thing is, I can do that in PhotoShop and have better looking graphics.  I thought "bones" would be the answer, but while they work fine, you can't use them on imported graphics--only Flash and other vector-based artwork, and can't be too complex, either. 

Maybe frame-by-frame is the way to go.  I'm not opposed to that, I just thought certain things would be easier in Flash.  That's the whole point with computers, isn't it?

Anyway, see you tomorrow.

October 6, 2016 (Thurs)

Very little creative work today.  Some tweaking of the merged file created yesterday, but otherwise nothing else.  Nice bunch of paid work, though not enough to encourage me.

A problem reared its head when my RAID drive started pausing and hiccuping when I tried to play music.  Even though the composer (Iannis Xenakis) is known for being odd, this was a bit too odd, even for him (RIP).

So I spent the evening doing one of my too-infrequent physical backups, as, typically, the hiccuping generally happens when a drive is about to die. 

Fortunately, the "Images" folder is now duly copied...waiting for "Sound" and the lag times are not encouraging...not that there's anything in this life that is encouraging.

Stay tuned.  And see you tomorrow.

October 5, 2016 (Wed)

Lots of work on Part Three.  Eliminated some stuff that bothered me, added some details.  I've come up with something I like.  I seem to be honing a bit excessively, and not "getting on with it," but at least it's something.

Paid work has fallen off dramatically.  This is not good. 

UPDATE:  Well, I thought I'd combine the first two bits of the new project into one project.  How hard could it be?  I mean, I figured, as an animation package, the folks behind Flash must know that scenes are created in a different order than that in which they are projected.  You shoot all your scenes in one location when you have access to that location, no matter when they appear in the film.  Then you have an editor combine them in the right order.  Snip, snip, make good.

As I said..."Well."

It turns out that this is possible, but it takes much more work than I thought it would.  I mean, staggering amounts of work.  When you create a "Tween" animation in Flash, or use a "Symbol" or a "Bitmap," Flash just happily assumes all of those are the same things, so it just as happily names them "Tween 1" or "Symbol 1" or "Bitmap 1" and so on, within the project.

But when you combine them...Flash doesn't know quite what to do with those various "Tween 1"s in the various projects.  It does ask what you want to do, but that assumes that I know what I want, and that Flash knows how to give me what I want.  And thus, you get results that are not at all what you wanted.  Fortunately, the "Revert" selection is right on the front menu.

So, after spending a bunch of time in each project renaming all the "Tweens" and "Symbols" and "Bitmaps"* to reflect their project of origin, I was able to get the bits to work together.

"Argh," as they say.

*When I create artwork in PhotoShop for use in Flash, I always give the images distinct names, so I know what I need to deal with.  So I have no idea where all these "Bitmaps" came from.  And yes, they were graphics imported from PhotoShop, but no, I didn't just name them "Bitmap 1" and so on.  It may have been something having to do with animating imported graphics, I suppose.  It makes me realize just how much I have to learn....

Anyway, see you tomorrow.

October 4, 2016 (Tues)

Not much paid work, always worrisome.  But what can you do.

Rather a lot of creative work in Part Three.  I thought of some additional elements, and created them in PhotoShop, then animated them.  I should feel happy about that, but I think I'm making this particular section over-complicated (and beyond my level) so I will have an excuse for not finishing, for saying "Oh well, I tried."

I guess here is where I have to double-down and try harder.  Which I'm sure I'll try...at some point.

See you tomorrow.

October 3, 2016 (Mon)

A bit of paid work.  Not much, but I'll take what I get.

Rather more creative work, in that I assembled some soundtrack stuff for part three.  Fun to do and fun to finish.

Otherwise, a pretty awful day all around.  Sunday started it, it continues, and it will probably keep going for the foreseeable future.

Ah well.  See you tomorrow.

October 2, 2016 (Sun)

I recorded some sound for Part Three of the project, and I feel a little better about it now.  I think what I need to do is assemble a soundtrack and work from that, rather than try to just throw ideas onto the stage and hope they're right.

Part of the problem for this part is that, as mentioned, it may be overly ambitious for my level of skill, and that's what scares me away and makes me think my efforts are mediocre.

Oh well, at least there's been positive motion.

See you tomorrow.

October 1, 2016 (Sat)

Lots of paid work, rather exhausting.  Plus a late night errand the previous night, and I'm too tired to think about creative work.  Added to that, worries over a failing hard drive mean I'm not pushing the computer too much while repairs are going on...which has been over a day, and promises to double that.

See you tomorrow.