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I don’t feel so good…

It’s Sunday and I haven’t posted in days.  I didn’t even post anything about new drawings, but that’s more because I didn’t work on them at all this past week.  I’ll just carry on through next week and go from there.

The past couple of days I haven’t been feeling good.  My body aches, I have stomach cramps, my back and sides hurt and I’m even a little gassy (although that’s not terribly unusual).   I had to work yesterday and I was physically and mentally exhausted afterwards.  I felt all floaty after we got back home.  Kind of like being light-headed but all over.

So I’ve been resting and making faces and moaning now and then, but not posting or drawing.  Monday is a public holiday so hopefully I’ll feel better and I can have some semblance of a decent weekend.

Ninja attack

Wow… I never once saw ninjas rob a store.  Ever.

Female ‘Ninjas’ Rob Richland Gas Station

Obviously all the cool new crime is happening in Pennsylvania… which I suppose should be a shock to no one.

Day off

Wednesday has been a public holiday so I’ve had the day off work.  Unfortunately, I forgot my sketchpad at work on Tuesday.  And I didn’t get a chance to work on anything before then.  So… it doesn’t look too promising for me to get any drawings done this week since I’m going to be busy at work tomorrow.  It sucks, but oh well.  It was bound to happen eventually.

Mid-Autumn Festival is a nice time of year here.  It’s a beautiful full moon out there tonight shining on the water of the harbor.  I’d take a picture but we really need a tripod to get it right.

How much for a home?

I’m just curious: How much do you spend each month on your rent or mortgage?

Prices for housing in Hong Kong are some of the highest in the world, or so it would seem.  Our flat costs $25,000 HK dollars ($3,205 US dollars) per month.  And it’s not that great of a place.  In the same area as us you see flats ranging in rent from $20,000 - 130,000 HK dollars per month (that’s $2,565 - 16,667 US dollars per month… that is not a typo).  My house in St. Louis, MO had a mortgage of around $700 USD per month so the sticker shock when looking here in Hong Kong was a bit extreme.

So like I said… I’m curious.  What do you pay for the place you live in?  You don’t have to say where that is if you don’t want.  Just thought it would be interesting to get some perspective on this.

Sunday morning

It’s Sunday morning. My better half is supposed to do a photo shoot for some kids outside but there’s a typhoon in the area so it’s raining a little. That kinds sucks.

I woke up with a bad headache in the middle of the night and I generally slept like crap. I’ve slept like crap for the past week. It may be time to break down and buy a new mattress.

Some anonymous someone dropped off free passes to go see the movie Rogue Assassin on my desk this week. Maybe we’ll go see that this afternoon. In the States, the movie is called War. Not sure why the name was changed here.

Future of music quorum

Matt over at The Onymous sent me this article on the future of the music industry from the eyes of five people with different levels of involvement in the music industry as a business, a culture and a mess. It’s a very long article but it’s very enlightening for those of you interested in music as a business. There’s some good history and realistic numbers that really help to put the hype and over-exaggeration of the industry into real perspective.

Drawings by Vince #3

It’s Friday, so it’s time for the weekly installment of Drawings by Vince! (applause, the crowd goes wild)

In case you don’t know the drill, here’s how this works. You (the reader) post things that you would like to have drawn in the comments of this post. I pick three ideas and work on them throughout the week. Then on the next Friday I post what I’ve done, no matter if they are finished or not. Easy, no? No.

So here are the drawings for this week:
This first drawing is a combination of two suggestions made by my lovely wife. She asked for quite a few things, but the ones I were most intrigued with were “a unicorn playing guitar” and “And a baby seal. I like baby seals.” So here you are, the only known picture of a rocking unicorn playing to an audience of baby seals. Notice that the unicorn must be playing one hell of a solo because the baby seals have their lighters out.

The second drawing was a difficult suggestion by Jason from Roth Family Adventures. He asked for a drawing of a character from one of my short stories. Well, I’m not very good at drawing people so I figured a monster would be a better choice. So here’s a concept drawing of one of the black creatures from my story The Magician. It’s hard to draw something black on black, so you just have to imagine that it’s all dark. I added some extra darkness with Photoshop. Because I can. Whatever.

The third picture was a suggestion from Shannon from Shannon River. She wanted a picture of a ferret. Preferaby with either a tuxedo or a chainsaw. I’m sure you could guess which one I went with. I haven’t seen the commercial she was talking about, so I came up with my own way of doing it. No mask though… you have to have the crazy ferret face.

So there you have the three new pictures for the week. Be sure to let me know what you think of these and don’t forget to make some new suggestions in the comments. Also, since next Friday is the end of the week, that will be the last time I take suggestions for this month. The results will be posted on Friday October 5th and then I’m taking a break from the crazy self-imposed drawing schedule. So make your suggestions this week and if yours doesn’t get picked, try again on September 28th for the final episode of the ’season’.

And now, over to you.

EDIT: Need more comments!  Come on, don’t be shy!

Free language learning site

Today I ran across this free language learning web site called Mango.  It’s completely free and it uses Flash 9 to go through slides to help learn quite a few different languages.  I started going through the Mandarin Chinese for English speakers just to check it out.  There are over 130 slides just in the first lesson and there are 100 lessons for Mandarin.  Umm… and this is free?

It’s still in Beta right now, so I’m assuming it will be a pay site once it goes live.  But until then, try it out.  It seems pretty nice.

Of course since it’s called Mango, that immediately made me start thinking of this evil little video.

Also, I talked like a pirate yesterday.  Did you?

Wednesday update

Fuck yeah, I had ice cream last night.  It was nasty and freezer burned but it tasted great.  Why?  Perhaps this will jog your memory.  So you know what that means, right?

I’ve been busy doing other stuff this week and the drawings are not coming along as expected.  Or at least not as well as last week.  I have two rough sketches worked out.  One I should be able to finish.  The other one though I think I may have bit off more than I can chew.  I think it will be a sweet picture, but I’m afraid it’s just beyond what I’m capable of doing.  Especially in a week.  We’ll just have to see how it goes.  Only two days left….

In other news:
Jack Thompson (anti-video game crusader) can’t seem to remember how to follow the law
Bisexual extraterrestrials steaming up Mass Effect

It’s a freaking epidemic

Thanks to Insomnic for pointing this out, but famed author Robert Jordan died on Sunday as well.  What’s weird is I actually had to search for this information.  This should have been front page Entertainment news.  This guy was a legend and he leaves behind an unfinished legacy in the Wheel of Time series.  There are a lot of very sad and very frustrated loyal readers to that mammoth series.

I guess as I get older, all the famous people will start dying off.  I’m guessing each generation has this happen.  I guess the difference is now that everyone is so informed about people (wether they want to be or not) that the death of a celebrity has more meaning to the common person.