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ozwalled

ozzy ozwalled
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Hello again

1 min read
I have not used DeviantArt in quite some time, for no real good reason.            
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So for anyone that follows this space, yes, I have indeed moved into a new place. Not loving it, but for now anyway, it seems it may be tolerable. It's sort of amazing just how much the feeling of not being suffocated, and being able to breathe a bit better can feel a touch like a small bit of optimism...

Internet's been an issue though, and the download speeds I'm getting seem to vary wildly, which I don't quite understand -- sometimes I get some (imo, great) speeds of 13 MB/s download speeds, but often, especially on my main/ desktop computer, I get low speeds of about 1 MB/s (even while sometimes getting much, much better speed on my laptop, sitting right next to my laptop)... Any ideas as to possible causes of this on this would be appreciated. Gonna' call the ISP soon and have a chat, so anything I might be able to tell them would be good.

In other, unrelated news, I recently put a few dollars toward what looks like a very interesting game, called Octopus City Blues. You can find out more about it (and even help fund it/ pre-purchase a copy) for the next few days or so, over on Kickstarter. www.kickstarter.com/projects/g… Hooray for crowdfunding. 

And though I'm lagging behind in the queue of images I've posted, I'm closing in on the 500th image I've made in Alchemy since the start of 2013. Yeah, sure, many of them (at least in my opinion) aren't the most interesting images, but the way I see it is that at least they're SOMEthing. I could, conversely, just be making absolutely nothing, which is probably exactly what I'd have been doing artstuff-wise had I not been making those.

(As a slight aside, I've also been doodling a bunch for the purpose of making Shape files for Alchemy -- it's such a little-used program that there aren't many people who much care, I'm sure, but if nothing else, making then has been a bit of zen-like therapy or some junk, if only because it's stuff that's so very different from anything else I usually do. I hope to upload more of those sometime in the nearish future, and in a strange way, am even somewhat "proud" of that stuff.)

All that said, it has been a crutch, all of it... or maybe more of a flotation device and life preserver? (to use a different sort of metaphor) So, in keeping with the apparent 2013 theme of me using it a ton to keep my head above water, once I reach the 500 mark of stuff made with it, I'm thinking I may start a small project with the program... It's something I've been mulling over for months now, and I feel like if I say SOMEthing about it, that maybe, just maybe it'll help me to motivate myself to actually get off my lazy as and get something done. Maybe anyway.... :/ Watch this space in the coming months, and hopefully I'll follow up on this.

But really, does anyone much read these? Does it matter? Do I even really care?
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Some good news

1 min read
Well, despite having to move on ridiculously short notice, with a huge dose of help from my brother, I've been able to find a place. It's not great, it's pricier than I can reasonably afford, and it certainly has its issues otherwise, but hopefully it will at least be a place to hunker down for a little while as I catch my breath.

That said, I'd lived here for a year without having felt like I'd truly had time to settle in enough to put a serious effort into a search before it was absolutely essential, so I'm skeptical it will be a quick process. I remain glacially slow.... Sloths would look at me and agonize over the pace of my meandering, sluggish crawl.

It seems the internet at this new place should be operational upon my arrival, but I'm not so sure I will be for at the very least, a few days. Packing and moving may not kill me, but I have a feeling it'll feel like they ought to have by the time I'm done.
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Well, I was barely given any notice whatsoever, but to make a longer story short, I need to find a new place before September. At least no one was murdered this time around, I suppose.

Moving stinks. And needing to do so in a very short period of time stinks even more. And in September again, at that, when all the students are getting in town, and eating up all of the potential spots.

Anyway, not that many people pay attention and/or will probably even notice, but if I'm soon offline for a fair stretch, it'd likely be due to complications/ delays in getting internet hooked up again right away, and probably not because I'm dead.

blegh.
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Though in many ways not at all productive, I've been playing with Alchemy again more lately. If you're interested in getting it to play around with for yourself, you can download this zip file and whatever (it's free): docs.google.com/folder/d/0B8Rc…

I've also made some more Pull Shapes for Alchemy, which can be found here: al.chemy.org/forum/viewtopic.p…

Moreover, I wrote up a tutorial detailing how Pull Shapes can be made for Alchemy, with the help of Inkscape: al.chemy.org/forum/viewtopic.p… (Inkscape itself can be downloaded here, and is also free: inkscape.org/ )

What's been eating more of my time though has been a little free-to-play multiplayer (1-4 player), online game called Warframe. It's not amazing or anything, but it's more mindlessness, and is reasonably fun I suppose. It's a 3rd person action affair, where you play as a gun-toting and blade-wielding, futuristic, armored space ninja or some such. PARKOUR! Anyway, it's not bad, and while it's not exactly a finished game (still in open beta), it's at least not got quite as hefty computer requirements as Planetside 2 does. It takes a little figuring out to get into (the Wikia for it can be handy to answer questions you have early on especially), but it's pretty smooth sailing in a short time.

I've also been playing a bit of Neverwinter, the new free-to-play Dungeons and Dragons MMO RPG thingamabob. It's kinda' neat in that it tries (IMO, reasonably successfully) to be an RPG with a more action-based slant. I'm not very far into it, but was able to get my character up to level 15 or something within a week or so of playing occasionally. It's pretty fun, and I'm just barely getting started.

ANYway, since they both can be played with other people, if any of you would like to play with along with me sometime, let me know. (For Neverwinter, if you're making a new character, I'm on the DRAGON server, so pick that one so that we can play together. For Warframe, I'm not sure it makes a difference, but I'm on the North American East Coast server or somesuch.) I swear that each game is reasonably easy to pick up, so there'd be no real need to get "caught up" to where I'm at or anything like that.

WARFRAME can be downloaded/ played via Steam, or downloaded here: warframe.com/
NEVERWINTER can be downloaded here: nw.perfectworld.com/

So yeah, we should totally play sometime. :)

That said, I may have to say something similar again sometime later, since I'll soon be doing some visiting and concert-seeing (including such highlights as FINALLY getting to see Weezer, and getting to bear witness to BB King... so nutty) and will be away for a large chunk of July as a result. Between that and seeing family, it should be a good time. Until then though, as usual, I spend much of my awake time on or near my computer.

Last, but not least for sure, I'm happy to say that one of my favorite comics (originally a 5-issue mini-series), Herobear and the Kid, is finally getting a long, LONG overdue followup. It's a superb all-ages book that you  really owe it to yourself to check out. The old one can be order off of Amazon or something if you so please, and it's being re-released sometime soon as well. And here's a preview of the new one, also in stores now: www.comicbookresources.com/?pa… Its creator, Mike Kunkel, has dome some work in animation, providing a very "animated" look and feel to the look of the book. It really does look pretty dang great, but at the core of the original story anyway, is a really cool and sweet, heartwarming tale. It's seriously brilliant, and I need more people to talk with about it, so yeah, check it out.

While I'm at it, I'll also plug SAGA by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples again. It's just so damn good, and in no small part due to the stunning visuals and character designs Staples is kickin' out. SO so good, and it's only a dozen or so issues in (some of which have been collected into a pair of volumes, so far), so THIS is a fantastic time to start from the very beginning of something so damn great that you're probably going to be hearing about it everywhere in no time at all, and you'll be able to say that you knew all about it BEFORE most everyone else did. I swear, if anything was destined to be a new TV or movie series based on a comic, it's this one. Do check it out, I implore you. You'll thank me later, I swear.

Oh, and I also recently made an appearance on Radio PSI again, since the lovely Izumi was doing a dedication show to me, on my birthday. It was a good time. You can listen to it here, if you like: radio.fobby.net/dumps/archives… And you can find out more about Radio PSI, a podcast type thingee that's vaguely related to starmen.net, which is a fansite for an old Super Nintendo, 16-bit game called EarthBound, for any of you who are unaware...

Anyway, this once again has taken me far, far too long to write. And for what? No one reads these things anymore, right?... Blergh.
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Featured

Hello again by ozwalled, journal

New Place, Internet, Octopi, Alchemy 500 plus by ozwalled, journal

Some good news by ozwalled, journal

Moving Again/ Internet Downtime by ozwalled, journal

Alchemy (Also: Wanna' play a game with me?) by ozwalled, journal