I’m going with the latter.
[video]
I gotta apologize for not posting this earlier, but I’m not really sure how to react to or reciprocate such praise! Thanks Calleballe, and I’ll put Tiger & Bunny on my list of anime to watch <3
Why are you just never not watching Tiger and Bunny, just put it on when you sleep man.
I was chatting with my old roommate last night, and she asked me how I lost 20+ pounds last year. I’ve decided to just make a list of everything I learned, so if it ever happens again I can link them instead of awkwardly saying, “uhh… Well, I counted calories and worked out, and… uhh… Drank a lot of water?” So here you go:
Man, what a negative year 2011 has been for me.
Well, not all bad in some regards, but I think the biggest weight on my mind is I’ve only done about 60 give-or-take comic pages this year. It’s been bothering me for the past month greatly, but a fire wasn’t lit under my butt like I wished it would have. My brain recycled with “wow, what a failure I am” instead of “so what can I do about it?”I used to have a yearly goal of 120-150 pages per year, and one year I almost reached it! I believe it was 2009, with 113 pages. Now that I think about it, the last two years’ resolution were “I will -concentrate- (lol) on comics more” not the scary “I will do even MORE this year! 150+ pages!!” that it should have been. I was so proud to do 100+ pages, even if I missed the goal by a few pages, why was I scared of pushing myself a little harder?
So, I feel it’s time to hold myself responsible for the specific 120-150 goal again!
2012 has a lot of projects that should have been done in 2010 and 2011 that I CAN accomplish, but I will have to keep a flamethrower on my ass to get them done. Finishing act 3, a new con book, the donation comic, and going to SPX again.
Basically, it boils down to 3 pages a week if I want to hit the coveted 150 page goal. (Ugh, just thinking how I only did 60-ish this year means…) I’ve made a spreadsheet to mark with a pen the day I finish a page. Every page this year has to go through Alice anyway so I definitely have to stay on my toes. Now, I’m not going to beat myself up if I don’t ding 150. I have to remember I didn’t make it in 2009, but I was so damn close and it felt great anyway. Just beat 113 pages!
Related resolutions for 2012:
—Strengthen my focusing “muscle.” Push myself to work a little longer each day, reread my worksheets I’ve received for my ADD, and stick with them no matter how much my brain kicks and screams. I have to remember like working out, I’ll have the big case of the “dun-wanna”s, and feeling mentally wiped by the end of the day. Then do it all again the next. If I can do it physically means I can do it mentally.
—I’ve been pretty good sticking with working out an hour+ 5 days a week for the past couple of months, but I really need to work on eating better if I want to actually lose weight. I still can’t consider to cook less calorie-rich foods, but I can cut down on portions (Ugh) and resolve to plan dinners better and only order out at least once every 2 months. (U-ugh…) I should keep track of this on my calendar too. (Ugggghhhh noooooo I depend on my crap memory to eat out lots…!)
Uwah, I feel excited and what-the-fuck-am-I-saying right now. I had the same reaction when I stated online that I will work out daily, in hopes the self-imposed sense of peer-pressure would get to me. —And thankfully, it has, even if I haven’t reported as much as I wanted to. Here’s to working towards a better year!
**wrong tumblr, lolz**
If you write things down, I find it helps.
For me, a big change in my eating habits was planning what vegetable my week was going to be centered around and supplementing stuff that either came from the frozen food section or canned. I know canned food gets a bad rep, but I’ve been using canned plum tomatoes for everything to pasta to salsa or beefing up a stew.
If you can get a walk in, alternating from walking to running every block helps too.
I’m trying to increase my cardio this year so I’m going to hit that icy sidewalk and snow tmmrw. Brrr.
(Source: tracywilliams)
Aw yeah, pre-production is awesome!!
I spent yesterday drawing character designs—actually drawing faces and outfits more than once AND inking them! I’m so used to just jumping into the comic pages and doing first time designs on the pages themselves. I even felt that same impatience yesterday, I wanted to just go into thumbnails and get to work. But I’m so glad I held myself back! I feel a lot more confident for sure.
I was worried it’d take too much time, but I’m surprised how much I got done yesterday. I plan to thumbnail tonight too.
I’ve read about the trick to first draw an overhead map of the place/room a scene will take place in—and I’ve actually done that, very loosely, as just a general guide. But for the next scene, I took more care into the layout. I drew a rug (Which didn’t take much time, using MSEX4’s symmetry rulers) and lay it down on the map then BOOM, I suddenly had a floor plan and able to see where furniture goes at any angle just by looking at the overhead map. I’m sure this is common sense to everyone else, but the excellent perspective book I’ve read (Perspective for Comic Artists) suggest to build a floor map similar to this, keeping track of how long things are by squares. But it felt like too much trouble, especially since I would just draw pages fly by the seat of my pants. LESSON SO LEARNED. I’m doing this trick from now on, even with a generic square-by-square grid.
So yeah, pre-production is awesome, and kicking myself for not taking the time to do it more. (Even though I’m already slow enough as it is.)
That book (Perspective for Comic Artists) is really, really good. I love it so much. (I need to buy my own copy)
(Source: tracywilliams)
Grocery Store Gardening | Written by Litda S. Tuy
There was a time where I wanted to grow a plant that I didn’t make it’s start from a seed, bulb or anything I could get my hands on conventionally. I wanted an exotic plant for myself so I could talk about it to my friends and do a little garden bragging. Sugar cane, lemongrass, sweet potatoes are all easy items to pick up from your grocery store vegetable isle but with a little experimentation, all three of these grocery store items can be turned into an indoor plant for cooking and eating.
All three of these plants can be grown in your apartment, the only problem is that they grow almost too well and may become a problem if you are worried about your plants taking up too much space. On the upside, you have a great conversational piece and something to give away to friends that you have actually grown yourself and can teach your friends to grow.
Lemongrass is an Asian herb which is used in many dishes in countries such as Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. In order to prepared lemongrass for growing, buy a bunch of lemongrass from the store. Be sure to select “young looking” lemongrass and avoid stalks that are too dry and yellow.
To prepare the lemongrass leave the roots untouched. You will need to trim and discard the top leaves so from the bottom to the top measure 4-5 inches and cut the stalks off, leaving the roots and the stem on the plant. Submerge the roots in a jar, two inches of water is enough. Try to leave two more inches above the water line for the sprouts to shoot up. Watch and change water daily, when you grow enough roots, transplant into your choice of pot (or jar) of soil. Pretty easy and the smell of lemon grass is very refreshing.
Sweet potatoes are quite easy to grow. Buy any breed of sweet potato and submerge half of the sweet potato in a vessel (an old jar or cup will do) filled of room temperature water. Leave it on a sunny window, change the water every day and if you feel like it, run warm (room temperature) tap water over the roots gently to wash off the slime that accumulates there. Don’t bother cutting it in half, after two or three weeks it should have sprouted leaves long, vines with leaves and grown long roots.
You can continue to grow more plants but cutting a two or five inch length of the sweet potatoes vines and placing the cup end in a cup or jar of water. Within two weeks or more, the vines should have sprouted roots and continued to grow. Be aware that sweet potatoes are a pest plant in Canada and can harm the local plant life, but it’s safe to grow in large containers and fabric grocery bags, as long as it’s not sown directly into soil. The sweet potato leaves are also edible. You can cook them like spinach with minced garlic and some provincial butter.
The trickiest of these three to grow is the sugar cane, mostly because you will need to buy “living” sugar can and it may be hard to tell which sugar cane is living or dried out. You can tell by the waxy texture of the skin and the vibrancy of the sugar cane’s coat.
You will need soil and a wide plant pot to grow the sugar cane, the plant will not grow horizontally but the sugar cane will start from a horizontal piece of sugarcane. You can use a Styrofoam take out container or a leftover plastic tray from a fast food joint, just make sure you clean the container well with soap and preferably hot, but warm will do.
Notice the segments on the sugar cane piece? The joints in spaces between those segments are where the roots and plant will grow from. This is IMPORTANT.
You will need to cut a minimum of a five inch length piece, if you can cut it longer do so. Try to make sure that each piece you have cut has two (or more) joints, if the joint is towards the end side of the length to leave half an inch or more and roots should still grow from that joint.
You can use candle wax to seal the ends and keep the moisture in, I’ve seen plastic bag pieces and rubber bands used to seal the ends but be sure to remove the bag pieces and the rubber band later. Submerge the piece of sugarcane on its side in soil, making sure half of the stalk is exposed. The stalk growing under the soil will grow roots from the joint pieces exposed will be where the shoots grow. Water and watch your sugar cane grow.
If you would like to transplant both your sweet potato plant and lemongrass plant into soil, make sure that you submerge the base of your started lemon grass three inches of soil and completely cover what is left of the sweet potato and its roots. If you would like to re-use old soil, it’s best to remove the old germs and fungus using the following methods.
The fastest way is to actually microwave your soil thirty seconds, but if you’re like me and you balk in putting soil in a microwave there is an easy alternative.
You can boil a pot of water with piece or two of crushed garlic. This can be done multiple times, but you should probably wait a week or two before transplanting. Another method that can only be done once is sprinkling a light dust of cinnamon followed by watering the soil and leaving it for a week or two before placing you plants in the new again soil. Sprinkling cinnamon more than once and your plant will possibly die, but once is more than enough.
Growing almost all three of these plants cost five to three dollars or less!
Be sure to re-use old pasta jars and use the methods above to re-use soil and you have some low-cost, high producing plants for your home or apartment. All three plants are ridiculously hardy, but try to remember to water them at least every three days. The only barrier to entry is remembering to grab some sugarcane, a bunch of lemongrass, or sweet potatoes on your way to the cash register.
Recettear: Broke to Hope
by Litda Tuy
Originally Written 05/01/11
Updated as of 19/10/2011
There’s a Bechedel test that gets talked about and thrown around lot. I think this game passes it after the introduction.
Recettear is a vendor simulator about paying off the debt of your father, as the game progresses it becomes less than trying to pay off a bill and more about running your own business and finding your own path. There is a large world inside Recettear, as you play through and get to understand the characters and game mechanics, you will definitely become addicted you’ll realize why I highly recommend this game.
You play Recette, a young ditsy brunette that ends up running the item shop to pay for a debt that her father left her with after he ran off to become an adventurer. It’s a long, long time before you see her father again and when you do it’s quite a scene. Recette is a cheerful girl and decides in order to pay the debt she will open an item shop.
Recette is accompanied always throughout the game by a small fairy named Tear. Tear is a fairy that has been contracted throughout the game to make sure you pay your dad’s loan to a company named Terme Finance. Tear teaches you about making money, the game basic mechanics and makes sure you pay your debt when the payments on time.
A game based on running an item shop and selling items does not sound fun, but it actually is. There are other parts of the game, like defeating dungeons and beating bosses. Well you don’t fight, but you tag along. You meet and get to know the NPC’s a little, even though they all are the same. You can build friendships with the NPC and adventurer characters and they’ll sell you things that can be sold at a better rate in the store or will help you fill the slots of your fusion window, because if you are playing this game and you haven’t been fusing items for fun on the side as well as selling and collecting things and hoarding stock, then get to it.
You can expand your shop, put in items, change your item shops counters, walls and floors after you raise your merchant level. Your shop expands with you if you let it, your tiny shop will hopefully become item shop in my game: huge with many spaces to place items and too little things to sell and not enough imagination to figure out how to use the space effectively.
This game comes at a high recommendation. My copy of Recettear was purchased during as Steam sale and it was discounted for $10.00: half the original price. There is a demo of the game available if you would like to sample it. It also has a predecessor Chantilise which was released by the game localizing company Carpefulgur as of July 27th, 2011.
It’s a solid game with a lot of things to do. You end up enjoying the game a lot too. It also stars to female leads which is rare. There are more girls then guys and no one is overly sexualized or fetishized at all. I can’t compare it to a lot of games. Suikoden 4’s buying and selling system and Harvest Moon, but Harvest Moon was never like this sorta maybe the fighting version I never played but that didn’t star any girls….maybe?
The game is pretty familiar if you know and played a lot of JRPG’s there are a lot of elements and jokes based on those types of games. It’s still very original due to the selling aspect. It also has that Ragnarok Online feel, Japanese RPG style, light fantasy. But it also has that “work hard until you get that cow/house upgrade/bed” aspect of Harvest Moon.
The lesson Recettear seeks to teach is: never co-sign for anyone and despite it that minor detail, paying off one’s debts (although challenging) was fun.
Do play if you liked: Old school Japanese RPG’s | Ragnarok Online | Harvest Moon | Suikoden 4 (only if you abused that money making thing)