Shockobabble

And you should too! Strangers from all over the globe freely share their images and other content to promote re-mixing and spread their message. It's a really cool community.

So I want to thank, Rojer for the ONLY hit when I searched for "shocko." It's a beautiful eel taken at very high resolution. I've decided to use it for my twitter account Shockobabble.

As you might know, I mainly use Twitter through SMS on my faithful Sharp Sidekick. So every once in a while I'll come across a tweet worth further investigation, but trying to find those tweets has proven difficult. I've tried Twitter's web interface and one of the leading clients, TweetDeck, but I haven't found an easy way to find those tweets.

So I figured I would try Twitter's Search interface. In some of my original attempts, I was not successful in finding individual tweets. Yesterday I sat down to clear out some old tweets on my phone. Usually, I'll just type the shortened URL into the browser, which alleviates the whole search problem. However, this time, when I typed in the URL an unexpected page appeared.

Apparently I had misread a "0" for "O" or vice versa and retrieved the wrong page (you know those URL shortners can be tricky, for example, "1" or lowercase "L"), so I had to search for the tweet. The particular tweet I was looking for was a little dated. It was from Ex-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich about "social gaming strategies that can help companies like BP win public relations battles". The date of the tweet was June 4th, 2010. I pulled up Google's Twitter Search and typed in "gingrich public BP." Bingo! While it had replaced "gingrich" with "newtgingrich" (his real Twitter account name), the tweet I was looking for was second in the list of results.

Just out of curiosity, I tried the same search on Twitter's Search Page. Zippo. I changed the search string to "newtgingrich public BP." Still, zippo! There it was, plainer than the nose on your face, Google's Twitter Search was better than Twitter's.

This of course, should come as no surprise. For Google, search is core to their success, it's what made them the number one search engine. However, for Twitter, search is context. It's a feature they added to help increase adoption of their micro-blogging platform. It is, among a long laundry list of features they need. Hint, that's a lead in to my next post.

Note: For more on "core versus context," see Geoffery Moore's "Dealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their Evolution." There's a summary the book's webpage.

Today was going to be the day
I'd worked out the plan
I'd even written it down
I was going to take the time
To work on things that mattered
At least to me

I was going to change the world
One piece of sculpture at a time
One drawing, One poem
One article, One blog post
Day by day
I was going to shake the Matrix
Until the foundations
Begin to falter
And the social disruption
I envision would begin to
Fall into place
Replacing sixty years of indoctrination
Buy, Obey, Consume, Reproduce

With a fools belief
at the heart of my plan
I was certain
That I could make a difference
Patience, optimism, persistence
We shall overcome
These were my new battle cries
I could see it all coming together
starting on just this first day

Instead my six year old
awoke with a fever
So she stayed at home with me
I took her to the Doctor
Where we confirmed
She had an infection
I went to the pharmacy
I bought the medicine
And I made her drink it
Even the bad tasting one
Yes I was going to
Save the world today
Instead I ended up
Saving a princess

I'm back!

Ready to stir things up again. One of which will be resurrecting the old shockobabble.com, including all those wonderful blog posts that everyone seemed to "love" so much. Until then, peace out.

Man, I was almost ready to give up hope on my old Aiptek tablet, but it might still have some life left in it. In connection with downloading a new driver, I also put in a fresh non-rechargeable battery in the pen. And now it seems like's it might be up to the task of sketching my comics directly into Inkscape.

Here's a fist study I copied from George B. Bridgeman's "Constructive Anatomy" using myAiptek tablet, I'd have to say that's it a lot better than any other time:

So I've been playing around a lot with Inkscape, it's a very impressive piece of software. At this point it's looking like the tool I'll be using to digitize my comics. From what I've been reading it has benefited from having developers that are also cartoonists, so while I haven't gotten very deep into some of the more sophisticated features it's comforting to know that someone has developed features that I'll come to rely on.

I've been through all of the basic tutorials that come with Inkscape, so now I've moved on to what I can find on the Internet. One of the first I came across was Slime to Start! by David Shaw. It was a really nice first step towards actually creating something comic book like. Overall, the tutorial was pretty good. It's a little old, so I think there might be some version creep between the version I'm using and the one used to create the tutorial, but it's good enough for me to reproduce the slime shown in the tutorial.

After realizing that I was getting lost in the Internet early today, I'm glad I took the time to finish this tutorial. It's been a real eye opener. I'm getting closer and closer to actually visualizing the images in my head coming out of Inkscape. So with out further adieu, say hello to Sammy Slime or maybe he's Jimmy Jello, I guess which ever you see slime or Jello:

A while back I participated in my first mail art project. Over the holidays I drew up a couple of pieces and sent them in. I just remembered to check and see if they arrived on time. So I'm happy to see that, at least one of them did make it in. You can see all of the submissions for 1rst International Art Mail Exhibition of Puerto Rico 2010 here. You can see one of the pieces I did here, under Iggy Kantoo.

Here's the other piece that I did:

I usually pay attention to a website that I end up landing on through a set of random links. For me, it's like the whole "law of attraction" or whatever, for me it's like the universe is shoving something in front of your face and saying, "uhum." Then it rolls it's eyes over to point at the site and then winks. Or hell, maybe I'm just rationalizing it in order for it to be something other than just a coincidence. Anyway...

A site I've discovered seems to be a real gold mine. As I've mentioned before, I've been pretty obsessed with doing my homework before launching some of my publishing projects, especially those which involve me having to draw, such as my comic books. While I'm still sort of torn between the idea that I'm "paying my dues" by gaining skills I currently don't have, or merely disguising my studies and practicing as a way to avoid from actually having to ship out any finished product. Again, it may be more rationalization, but I'm just not happy with my drawing skills. I've greatly improved my ability to draw faces, but have recently detected, that another troublesome area, hands, are still weak. So I'm drawing daily, copying examples, and I know that I'm getting much better.

So through a couple of unrelated links at Boing Boing, except that they were both about cartooning and caricature, I found the wonderful site for the Animation Archive of the International Animated Film Society: ASIFA-Hollywood. Really, I'm simply overwhelmed with the depth of instructional material available on this site. They have archives of legendary animators like the Grim Natwick's Scrapbook as well as an odd collection of Mexican Lobby Cards. With a mountain of other other instructional material, any aspiring cartoonist would do well to research this site closely and time permitting, study as many of the tutorials as possible.

Sure a lot of the material is old, but as an avid book reader and collector, I've found that some material is simply timeless. Most modern books are merely just rehashing material presented 50 years ago by the masters. This includes not only cartooning, but topics such as self-help, leadership, and motivation. For my money anything written after Norman Vincent Peale and Dale Carnegie is just a rewrite of their timeless advice, but I digress. The bulk of the tutorials listed on the Animation Archive can be found on this page, which is a massive collection of links for "The Top Ten Reasons To Contribute To A-HAA." Enjoy, and may your cartoons become reality soon!

While I had been really gearing up to make this a visual journaling year, I've been tempted to try something else. Smashing Magazine challenged everyone by posting "Design Something Every Day!"

As stated in the post: "I challenge you today to design something daily. Take fifteen to twenty minutes that you would normally use to surf the Web today and devote it to designing something." The post offers some valuable suggestion, to keep you hooked an producing. So far I'm two for two. Wow, right!

My biggest challenge I think will be keeping the design to under 20 minutes. I tend to obsess on the details of my drawings and that can end up sucking an hour from life, easy. So I've got to keep the drawing fluid and rapid. Regardless, I'm stoked and ready for this challenge, I think it's going to be greate exercise practing my cartooning. I'll be launching a new blog to capture my daily images, so stay tuned for that.

I'm not sure what bug crawled up my ass New years Eve, but I suddenly want to engage in more activities. I know I still have pending projects, but somehow, I think I'll be able to make progress on multiple fronts.  I also want to get back involved in open source, which is a nice surprise. It's taken me 3 and half years to recover from my fall from grace, but I've got some ideas to do something a little different that might be appreciated.

Once again, I thank KathySierra of Creating Passionate Users and Head First fame for the inspiration.

Recently I've become captivated by artists who make moving sculptures, or should I say movable sculptures? The artist I first discovered was presented in episode 5 of MakeZine television. The motorized wave sculptures, created by visionary maker Reuben Margolin, are elegant and hypnotic. Make magazine has been a real hit for O'Reilly Publishing, and the extension of the magazine into video has been very inspiring. I really appreciate O'Reilly making a version of the video available for download. This is an important concept a lot of content producers haven't yet figured out. If you're going to go through the trouble of producing content, it makes little sense to throw up obstacles to obstruct people from consuming that content, of course, this is at the heart of the entire debate raging in the publishing world.

The other artist is Theo Jansen, which I learned of from the fantastic Boing Boing. According to his own description, Theo is building new life forms, which he aims for them to survive on their own.  In this short video from the TED Talks, Theo gives a brief overview of some of the inner working of his creations. He also describes his driving motivation in attempting to make his creations self-sufficient.

These two artists have inspired me to make some moving or movable art. The first form that comes to mind is the mobile.  I made one a while back out of used aluminum racing horse shoes. My daughter and I worked on it for a cousin of mine who loves and owns a bunch of horses. I thought it turned out pretty cool, but I visited her place last year when my brother died, and the mobile has still hanging on the wall of her stable where she put it several years before. Boy everybody is a critic, right?

The other form that comes to mind is the weather vane type of sculptures made for the movie Twister, remember those? A little googling turned up that the artist commissioned for the movie was Evan Lewis. Another related artist I found was Lyman Whitaker, who makes Outdoor Kinetic Sculptures.

All of this is totally overwhelming, but fascinating, truly fascinating.

I've already trimmed some paper in preparation of creating two pieces for the 1st International Art Mail Exhibition of Puerto Rico 2010. The theme is "Stop Child Abuse Now," now the technique is open to the artist, but each piece can be no larger than 5" x 6", which doesn't leave a lot of real estate for much.

The deadline is Jan 31, 2010, so there's plenty of time. However, I'd be lying if I said I'm over-flowing with ideas. I got one, but like I said, there is just not much room for anything. There's a blog set up to post entries as they come in, and while I've seen a couple, I don't want to look at too many entries. I'd like my ideas to be fresh.

I'll post what I finally come up with after I've sent them in.

A while back Boing Boing ran a contest for 100 word works of fiction. The theme was "Found in Space." To enter all you had to do was leave a comment with your entry. Today they announced the finalists, but unfortunately I wasn't one of them. They received 8,00 entries. So I wanted to share my entry. Besides my poetry, and the fake news stuff I did over at "The Fake News Nightly", I'd have to say this was my first true attempt at fiction writing. Anyway, here was my entry:

"Is that You? Where am I? There was a moment, just before the truck smashed into me. When I thought the panic would overwhelm me, everything became still. Silence. Peace. Tranquility. There was no pain. I felt calm. "How could that be?" I am, but I have no body. "How can that be?" I try to remember, and there's nothing left to remember. I am. Nothing more. "What is happening? Am I lost?" I sense the infinite, I am the infinite. "Wait, what's that?" I'm descending! Quicker now, everything is dimming. In total darkness now. I am born a new.

It was fun to participate as well as a welcome challenge to exercise my fiction writing muscles. Something I aim to exercise more often int he future. I read through the finalists and voted for the entry by Thought Grime, who is currently losing to the entry by femaletrouble3.

It really is a shame that we can't live multiple lives, stop time, or live forever. The web, it seems, is continuing to produce great example of innovation and entertainment. And, if anything, it seems to be be accelerating at how fast cool new sites pop up. Here are ten that are all worthy of great attention, unfortunately, I just can't afford to spend any of my attention on them:

1. The Forum Channel - One-of-a-kind video content, which features unlikely combinations of celebrities and experts talking live and unscripted about topics that range from the serious to the ridiculous. The site offers hundreds of clips as well as full Forum conversations, and you can also search by dozens of panelists. 
2. überpix is huge archive site for entertaining pictures. Our pictures (or “pix”) vary from plain old funny pictures, to our collection of demotivational/motivational posters and FAIL pix. 
3. The Ninth Annual Year in Ideas - The Times Magazine looks back on the past year of ideas. They present, from A to Z, the most clever, important, silly and just plain weird innovations we carried back from all corners of the thinking world. 
4. National Archives and Record Administration - YouTube collection of videos from the vault of the National Archives. Enjoy!
5. Make Magazine - MAKE Magazine brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the technology in your life. 
6. h+ online magazine covers technological, scientific, and cultural trends that are changing — and will change — human beings in fundamental ways. We will be following developments in areas like NBIC (nano-bio-info-cog), longevity, performance enhancement and self-modification, Virtual Reality, "The Singularity," and other areas that both promise and threaten to radically alter our lives and our view of the world and ourselves.
7. The Oatmeal - Everything on this site was written, drawn, and coded by Matthew Inman. The Oatmeal's real name is Matthew and he lives in Seattle, Washington. He subsists on a steady diet of crickets and whiskey. He enjoys long walks on the beach, gravity, and breathing heavily through his mouth. His dislikes include scurvy, typhoons, and tapeworm medication. 
8. Lifehacker - Most Popular Top 10s of 2009: Here are the 20 list(icle) posts that proved the most popular in 2009.
9. MakeUseOf, a booming daily blog that features cool websites, computer tips, and downloads that make you more productive. The aim of MakeUseOf is to guide you through the web and tell you about hot websites that you have never heard of, free alternatives to popular software programs, and all kinds of “how to” tips for Windows, Mac and Linux computer users.
10. Singularity University - Singularity University (SU) is an interdisciplinary university whose mission is to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies in order to address humanity’s grand challenges 

I remember clearly 15 years ago when I finally gained free and unlimited access to the Internet. It was amazing. After struggling through my initial online experiences of logging into bulletin boards, it was thrilling, it was liberating. With a quick click I was now able to access more information than humanely possible to consume. Now flash-forward, and the Internet has become an infinite source of enjoyment and distraction. 

I love design. I love art. I love photography. I love software. And I love reading. In short, I love just about everything that the Internet makes available to me. However, there is a seductive quality to the Internet which always tempts me. I  can hardly be on the Internet for 5 minutes with out finding 5, maybe 10, articles, libraries, or galleries. All of which seem worthy and deserving of my attention.

Just recently however, I reminded myself of my goals and reemphasized my rule to limit the amount of time I spend on leisure activities. The first step involved un-scheduling all of my favorite shows from the DVR. The second step involved un-subscribing from all non-essential feeds and email newsletters. I've left only the most useful and entertaining, what can I say? I can't totally disconnect. The last step is the hardest. It requires my constant vigilance against pointless surfing on the Internet. While "pointless" may be harsh, I have to monitor how I spend my time. 

I once read that one of the reasons why people get addicted to checking their email accounts so frequently is because they are hoping to score a fix, i.e., an important message. Now important can mean many different things, from a message from a close friend to a key business communication. Like gambling we get addicted to checking our email accounts in hopes of hitting it big, in other words, receiving that important message. 

For me, the Internet is also like that. So while it's easy to dismiss taking the time to find a set of web pages that seem unrelated to my goals, I'm addicted to the thrill of finding a golden nugget. Metaphysically, sometimes you find something that fits into what you need, but you didn't know you were missing it until you find it. Some call this "The Law of Attraction." Some call it coincidence.

I know this obsessiveness is overkill, but I know myself. If I don't focus on my goals, I'll lose myself within the Internet chasing down fool's gold. Another strategy I've started to use is Twitter. Sometimes I know something is important, probably worthy of reading, but off topic. So instead of ignoring the new information, I'll just quickly share the link and a few words and then I'm on my way. I do this for two reasons. First, I want to share something I've found that will probably be useful. Second, I essentially archive the link, just in case I need the information, I know exactly where it is.

I've just figured out another tool to help me out. Sometimes, I'll get lost within a topic and end up with a useful collection of web pages that really lay the foundation for understanding something new. In the past, I would use the "Bookmark all Tabs" feature in Firefox and hope to remember to revisit the topic soon. What I've found though, is that I rarely go back and pick-up the thread. So instead of loosing all of my research, I'm going to start sharing my research in brief blog posts. Just as with Twitter, my hope is that I can quickly document what I've found, share it, and have the links ready just in case I need to go back and use them. The key here is that the process has to be fast. The first will be coming soon, as I got lost last night researching art journaling.

Photo Courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons: Annadriel

Staring off into the infinite
My soul draws me there to join you
We flow together within a river of consciousness
We are the collective infinite 

As I continue my journey inward, 
I discover ancient myths
They guide me through the darkness
in my search for meaning, 
nay I'm seeking the divinity
that lies hidden within me

Today I stumbled 
Even though I've been this way before
I was hoping that it had changed
I was stretching to cross over
a familiar obstacle
but as I leapt over
I imagined for a moment 
that a new step had appeared
however as my feet were ready to
land on the new foothold
it disappeared into delusion
and I ripped my leg open 
as I once again fell to the ground

As the pain erupted within me
it was overwhelmed by embarrassment
How could I let this happen again?
I'm trapped within the duality 
of the man I choose to be
and the man that I can not be
And yet, a shadow within me still remains
which neither prayer nor drug
nor advice can pacify

As the sun sets, 
I'm lost once more
within contemplation
I'll have to venture
again into the darkness
to confront my fears
My torment is my own
it haunts me when
I'm weak
and conspires with
my doubt to keep
me from reaching you

Photo Courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons: Tyson Cecka

As I was in Borders trying to choose which was going to be my next investment in comicbook making resources, it hit me that I've really always assumed that my comicbook making was going to be done on the computer.

So I invested in The DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics. I had been looking at a few other choices, but they were all pen and ink based. So over the wekkend, I got to thinking. I better dust off the old tablet interface and give her a try.

Man, was that a frustrating experience. It might be that I've got a old Aiptek Wacom wannbe that was built to run on Windows XP, I'm on Vista now, and it could have also been the program I was using, but I'm unimpressed with my results. Take a look:
I know, pathetic. My next attempt will be using the tablet and Inkscape. That should allow me to have more control and hopefully, the ability to smooth out my squiggles. I've got to go back and redo the tutorials using the tablet so I can get more hours behind the tablet. It really all comes back to that one principle. They difference between those that produce and those that don't is the diligence, commitment, stubbornness, and perserverance to put in the time.

While I'm still trying to put the final touches on another wire sculpture, I'm studying hard to prepare myself for the big one: writing my first book, uh, comic book that is. As I've always found in the past, when you're engaged in some sort of organized program, it's a lot easier to produce. Whether it was school or work, the structure, process, and deadlines, always made me better at whatever I wanted to do. Of course, when you're out on your own, outside of all organization, creating becomes, at least for me, more challenging.

As I've been reading consistently about art and writing, one thing comes through loud and clear. And, in a way, it proves my theory. The demands of a structured environment accomplish what is THE difference between publishing a book and only wishing you did. That structure (dedication, sacrifice, commitment) puts your butt in front of a keyboard and demands that you produce. A lesson I frequently share is that whatever you want to do or be, you have to spend all of your time do or being that thing. Painters paint, singers sing, chefs, cook; authors write

So in order to prepare myself and create the structure I know I'll need to keep my butt in front of a monitor, I'm pulling together some structure from a couple of books to create a writing process. The first resource I'm using is from Elizabeth George's "Write Away", she calls it a character prompt sheet. This bullet point list of attributes help create a in-depth character analysis, which George considers one of the fundamental pre-writing activities. I've also read this ideal from other authors; building a rich character helps you ultimately know what a character will do when you put them into a what-if scenario.

Here's a few triggers that I need to answer so I can bring Dopeman to life:

• What is Dopeman's real name?


• How old is Dopeman?


• How tall is Dopeman?


• What is Dopeman's weight/build?


• Where was Dopeman's born?


• What color are Dopeman's hair and eyes?


• Does Dopeman have any physical peculiarities?


• What is Dopeman's educational background?


• What is Dopeman's sexuality?


• Who is Dopeman's best friend?


• Who are Dopeman's enemies?


• Who are Dopeman's family (mother, father, siblings,etc.)?


• What is Dopeman's core need?


• Does Dopeman have a pathological maneuver?


• What is Dopeman's ambition in life?


• Does Dopeman make any gestures when he's talking?


• How is Dopeman's gait?


• What is Dopeman's strongest character trait?


• What is Dopeman's weakest character trait?


• What does Dopeman laugh or jeer at?


• What is Dopeman's philosophy?


• What is Dopeman's political leaning?


• Does Dopeman have any hobbies?


• What do others notice first about Dopeman?


• What does Dopeman do when he's alone?


• Will the reader like or dislike Dopeman?


• What event significantly molded Dopeman's character?


• What event illustrates Dopeman's personality?


• What super powers does Dopeman have?

Photo Courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons: Jakob Montrasio

If I told you I was I prophet
would you think I was vain
or just insane

If I told you that I know things
or that I'm able to see truths
that remain hidden from you
would you think that I was just vain
or simply insane

If I told you that God speaks to me
and answers my inquiries
would you think that I was simply vain
or totally insane

If I told you
that you should listen to me
because I have heard your prayers
and am prepared to share God's answers
would you think that I was totally vain
or completely insane

Of course, you've got no reason to believe me
for I'm just another prophet
in a long line of fools
that believed he could
make a difference

Maybe I am completely insane to believe
that anyone should listen
to what I've been asked to share
but then why would you
for you haven't been with me
through my long and endless pain

Maybe it's the pain
that has driven me to insanity
that has convinced me
that even though my faith wavered
God's faith in me never did

No you weren't with me
as I quietly suffered
down a long and lonely road
but God was there

You weren't there
to hear my desperate
cries of agony
nor were you there
to aid in my comfort
but God was there
he heard my screams
and quieted me with the truth

In the end
it doesn't really matter
whether you listen
to me or not

My mission is to share
what I've learned
in as simple and helpful
terms as possible
whether you learn anything
is up to you

Photo Courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons: cindy47452