=Louisisthebest007

Journal

| Pressing Return |
Returning to my journal once again after not using my account aside from favouriting for a while. I'm thinking maybe I'll schedule a weekly journal to keep things going without overrunning everybody's message centre with my incessant ramblings.

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| My mum's Wedding |
My mum got married to her fiancé just yesterday (as of posting), I was the 'Son of the Bride' and had to give her away and make a speech. With the help of my sister, I managed to do so well I made every woman in the room cry at my charming speech and warrant almost every person in the room to comment how well I verbalised it.

I guess all that practising til mid-night proved useful after all!


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| DreamHost come true |
After purchasing some web-space with a conveniently-timed promotional offer from a nice webhost called Dreamhost, I now have my own domain with generous disk-space and bandwidth along with it. With that said, I'm looking for anybody who needs some web-space to do whatever they want to use it for. From websites to file-hosting, I'm pretty sure Dreamhost can do it all.

But I'm sure with an offer like this, random passers-by will be tempted to scoop up a bargain and consider all this text tl;dr.

At this point in time I am personally offering hosting slots to people myself, I'm not letting resources go to just anybody, it's just not right. That's not to say I won't allow private notes regarding the webhosting slots I'm offering, just don't expect to succeed.

Journal

University admission
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My mum reminded me of a letter than came through today and I decided to check it out, it was rather confusing but I knew it was from UCAS, a UK organisation in connection with a university I wanted to do a course on 'Games Art & Design' for next year.

Eventually I gave it to mum, reading the letter properly to tell me that I had succeeded in my only entry into the Norwich school of Art & design for fun days of fulfilment in drawing and making video games. On a unconditional basis no less, which means so long as I reply before a certain date I'm in regardless.

All those scrabbled days of finding old artwork and rushing them into a portfolio paid off, fortunately an art-teacher and my other student-help teachers were there to help me prepare said portfolio. And my strangely enough, my mother banning me from all internet access until it was done had some perks, I was able to finally focus on some artwork for once instead of being drawn into cheap thrills.

Something tells me next year is going to be a very productive year, I might even upload artwork more than once a lifetime?
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YMCK ...no, not the colour-plate for printers
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One of my friends introduced me to the nostalgic world of modern chip-tunes a week or so ago, apparently there is this J-band called YMCK who's songs are entirely played out in simulated 8-bit chip-tunes, similar to what the original Nintendo or Atari might have played.

The songs were bouncy and upbeat just according to taste, and somehow despite the lyrics being all Japanese and non-understandable, I couldn't help but listen to them over and over again on Youtube. I'm usually the guy who's not into J-music because of said non-understandable lyrics but the whole musical genre allows me to tone out the vocals, they're a nice band!

Their music videos also take on a nostalgia, all rendered with 8-bit similar graphics. Some utilising some rather advanced mode7 manipulation, it fits the music fantastically. If any of you passers-by are curious, just try searching 'YMCK' into Youtube and you should be able to find some of their songs there.

Lastly it seems that one of the band members had made a synthesiser plug-in called the 'Magical 8-bit plugin', it gives AudioUnit/VSTi compatible music composer software the ability to emulate primitive sound-waves to create your own 8-bit chip-tunes, just in case you're curious and musically adept.
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The Colosseum
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I was interested to hear from my recently renewed friendship with *ConnerCoon that he was going to enter a kind of original-character tournament called and hosted by *TheColosseum. For those who aren't aware what an 'OC Tournament' is about, it's a kind of art-battle of people's characters in, you guessed it, a Colosseum.

Since the final date for collecting 'articipants' is the 30th of May, I've decided I'd give it a shot and complete with my main character, Mark Jerry. I'll have to look into the rulings a bit more but it looks I could have a partner compete alongside me, but anyway.

I wanted to try out an OC tournament ever since I saw something called the Winter something.., unfortunately character entries was too far-gone for me to compete. Fortunately not only will I have time to enter, I'll be able to fight knowing someone in there likes me, my good friend *ConnerCoon! :> See you there mate!

Journal

Daily Sketchbook
After looking around Encyclopedia Dramatica I went onto one of ConceptArt's forum topics involving a lulzy round of shouting at artists who don't take critique if at all. I learned that if you make a Daily Sketchbook and draw something in real life, the practise will help you improve. So basically that's what I've been doing!

I've only been doing it for a few days now, with the second day just finishing off a picture of my kitchen. There's only so much I can draw in my house before I run out of things to practise on. I'll probably draw some people and places around my college when it starts in September. My traditional skills are quite poor compared to my colouring so I need to balance some things out.

Unfortunately this means the already lack of artwork I'm doing will practically stop, unless something amazing happens of course. Since I'd much rather learn to draw well rather than just to whore up stats and popularity.


Satire!
I've been surfing ED quite a lot recently, I find everything within it very funny and truely understand the core purpose of the site. Since a lot of furries, fetishists and sites get shot at by this website, I now understand true satire and enjoy the site for it's lulz. Mind you, this site does go a bit too far sometimes in the way of posting very personal information in public, that could lead to some bad abuse.

But whether or not people find the articles about them or their friends funny, I know not to take the internet seriously. Also that the site itself is not responsible for libel or defamation, so making journals and generalising ED usually leads to having an article of yourself put on the front page


Comic Series - Work in progress
As I mentioned a while back, I'm one of those dreamers who wants to make a comic book series and one day publish it everywhere and get famous. Since I'm nowhere near to being a good comic book artist I've decided to just write down all the info on the series including a plot breakdown so when I do finally get onto drawing the project, I'll have some nice material to work from.

Since I plan to publish books and story comics, there's a fairly low chance I'll upload these to the internet even as pages due to exclusivity and stuff. Maybe I'll put up a Web-comicstrip someday, maybe later.

Dreamhost and devART prints
Miscellenous info, I found a site called Dreamhost which offers fantastical paid webhosting. I was pretty impressed with the prices and features offered, especially the One-click install Wikimedia and PHPbb. They even increase disk-space and bandwidth weekly for free. Maybe if I had some time I would join that group, since my previous Hostiz shut down.

I've been spying on the devART prints too, I thought it would be cool to submit one of my deviations as a Mug or fridge magnet. None of them are really good enough but I'll probably custom-draw something for that purpose and load it in for purchase.

Conclusion - tl;dr
Practising Life-drawing, writing up a comic book series, interested in getting a webhost again and thinking of making one of my deviations into a print I can buy myself.

Journal

Noooooooo!
The worst had happened, I checked onto my computer one day to discover it wouldn't turn on. I was pressing the button, checked the cables and nothing. Only a red LED from my Floppy/Memory-Card reader was working. With that big family holiday coming up and my friend not being able to come round, I was stuck with a broken computer for over a couple of weeks.

I couldn't bring it to a shop because of the holiday, woe is me. At least until I decided to take the...

Holiday to Newquay!
Only a week ago I was in the Sunny coastal town of Newquay in Cornwall, home of the Cornish Pastry. I was there with my mum, mum's boyfriend Ian, Ian's parents, my sister and her boyfriend and Ian's sister and her boyfriend. A party of 9 going camping, hoo boy.

Throughout the week we looked around shops, looks over the fantastic views of the bays and cliffs, I would've taken photos but mum didn't bring it, indirectly blaming me for not doing it myself considering she was using it on her holiday only a couple of weeks before then!

One of those days was a trip to the beach, only around 100ft away from out campsite. It was neat because it had an amazing tide that one part of the day would be a half a mile of sand beach, the other day the entire bay would be covered in ocean. It even had it's own river that past our camp! Too bad it's against the rules to swim or use inflatables in there.


I caught a Tan too, without even trying much! The only annoying thing was that my Tan also caused a Sunburn that lasted a few days. Ian always makes jokes of me being a vampire because I spend most of my time indoors, oh how true that statement was after that sunburn.


I did some gaming down at their arcades, totally owned OutRunSP2 and G.H.O.S.T. Squad against Ian who bet he could win against me. There are a ton of clubs and resturants all around, Newquay is like the polar opposite of my town, with Newquay being super-amazingly popular and teched out.
You can guess the rest.

The worst part of the trip wasn't the holiday at all, but rather the returning back home. There has been some major heavy rain last friday that flooded out many towns including Swindon, and guess where we were at the time...? The traffic jam was horrendous, the worst jam I and my mum had ever since. Our TomTom said we were 220 miles away when we decided to go on a shortcut. Two hours later and we had to turn back, the TomTom now read 220...So basically we had waited two hours only to make a total distance of Zero...



It cleared itself eventually, but our estimated time to go back home went from 7pm to midnight literally.

Yeeeeesssssss!
Returning home, my Dad came to visit and I got to go to a family wedding reception at a hotel in my town. Yay! I like it when my dad visits, it's probably the only time in my life I genuinely enjoy a family member's company.

My dad got robbed after the party while he was at his friends house. The ultimate diss; The thief sneaked in through the front door and not only stole my dad's phone, his wallet containing his license and cards and £500 but also stole his trousers. That's right, the thief stole his PANTS as he was sleeping on the couch...Bastards!

Throughout the week up until now we've been spending time with each other including my sister, he managed to get back most of his stuff and cancel his stolen objects. The YEEESSS! part of this journal entry is also because my dad funded my computer to be fixed at the shop!

Apparently the problem with my computer was a broken power supply, the 5 rails it uses to power each of the devices had one or more of it's rails broken. My floppy drive was still recieving power hence the red LED, but the rail powering my motherboard and such was gone, which was why my computer didn't turn on.

Even more of a yes, not only did I get a new power supply, but my dad paid for new RAM I wanted. Now increasing my 512 to a 1Gb memory, whee!

Lazy bastard...!
I wanted to draw on my holiday, but never got the chance to do anything. What a bummer. And with my dad down as well, I still hadn't time to do anything up until the date of this journal. I will try to do some artwork but it's only going to be until today I can start focusing on doing something.

Journal

Like I mentioned in my title, I'm ditching that 100 picture challenge because I simply just didn't do any of it at all.

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New Deviation! _{Gasp, litb007 drew something, reality is destablising!}

I recently uploaded a new deviation after many infinities of idleness. Please excuse the crap thumbnail, I would've made a custom thumbnail for my transparent PNG but devART hasn't (or more likely won't) re-implement that feature.

It is vital you full-view and use either Firefox or IE7 for it to show up properly. (IE6 is crap and I have no sympathy for those who don't keep their computers up to date)

It would also be nice if I could have some critique on it too, as always I'm trying to improve and it would be INFINITELY BETTER without the 'cool' or 'awesome' one-worders that devART is plagued with nowadays.



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Account Sort-out _{Summer-cleaning? Nah, sounds better when it's spring...}


I did numerous things to my account like sort out my friends list, obviously posting a new journal, new deviation, new inspiration to draw. But most of all I'm finally clearing my watchlist by commenting (and if it's good, favouriting) all the deviations I've been for so long. Now I have 693 deviations to sort out, and that's not including new ones that'll surely appear.

Ow, brainhurt...

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Polls! _{^GH-MoNGo ain't the only one with polls :P}

I've created a new poll called
[9/7/2007] Rate my Gallery
which is a simple 1-5 rating of what you think of my gallery and how I improved. All the details are in a comment by me (easily visible if you've set comment sort to 'Oldest) and I hope I have my work gauged fairly. If abuse arises I'll simple delete the poll and start over on a different date.

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Conclusion!

The end!