For the upcoming weekend with Mother's Day, it was suggested I use the icon of Renamom's that I colored for fun the other day, hehe. Tis a fun idea. ^^

Pardon me being quiet on here of late. Been a sidetracked with things since there's an upcoming trip. Also been staying out of the recent site drama as much as possible. ^^;

Anyway, something I've noticed and thought I would discuss is how much the decorations in a drawing can say about the person who either commissioned it or the artist themselves. While I admit that I'm not always the most observant, when I do look for things I can notice some, what I think are, neat little details. And when a scene in an image is decorated, there are times it's possible to see either what the artist sourced or the location involved without a place being named at all.

There's a phrase with writing to "write what you know". If you live a suburban life and commute, it's much easier to relate that to the page than a place the writer has never been. For me, I've lived in smaller towns much of my life, so I couldn't write about, say, Berlin, Germany, as easily without a lot of research. Fiction with made up places is easier because the location is much more well known in the writer's mind by default since they likely created it all within their own mind. To use an example with myself, the city Vaid and Rachel live in is a decent sized city that doesn't exist on any map, yet still feels grounded in its details when I use it in my works. That brings me to my next point, alluded to earlier.

I will freely admit that by looking at the props in my art, you can pretty well tell that I'm from the United States. Now, while I could completely make stuff up (and do when more sci-fi or fantasy stuff is involved), the day-to-day props of electrical outlets, road signs, and such are easier to just use what I know unless I want or need to go for something different for the sake of it. I'm far from the only one to do that. For example, an artist from England will likely use UK-style outlets for the same reason. It's what s/he knows and it's easier. Nothing wrong with that at all and it can even make for some neat little nuances and details to pick up on in an image. We're basically into the visual art version of "write what you know", in this case the word "write" being replaced with the word "draw". And it's not just scene details, either. There're also running gags and easter eggs that can show up. I can think of several artists off the top of my head who do stuff like that, and it's just as fun to find in their images. I've even commented a number of times when I see such things, such as "Oh, hey, that's a cute little plushie sitting back there". I have a number of such examples in my gallery as well. X3

Anyway, those are some thoughts of mine. Feel free to comment, discuss, whatever. I'm curious to hear thoughts about the topic. ^^

Partly to bump the old journal and because it's been a while since I've done one. Feel free to ask me, or my characters, things. ^^

Have a fun and safe time with friends and family. Tis a wonderful time of year ^^

Been a while since I've done one of these, so why not? You guys now how these work, so ask away.

Goodness, where do I start? This past weekend was such a blast and adventure. Might as well tell it in order as a story of sorts X3

Got on the train early Thursday morning. Opted for the train to make it part of the adventure and save some money in the process. Was very comfortable all the way to Chicago and the food on board was quite tasty. I think the theme would be "Amtrak: Quietly one-upping every major airline". The only drawback would be that it's not as rapid. Knowing that, I would probably line up my schedules a little better as most of the timing issues were my own bad and not the fault of them. But it was almost magical at times seeing the countryside going by and met some interesting folks along the way.

Got in Friday morning and met up with  agentgrimm, who I was rooming with along with  anjuneko and  leonkatlovre in one of the secondary hotels, which made for a bit of a walk, but wasn't too bad. Leon was down getting ready for the Artists' Alley at the time, so I wasn't able to catch up with him until later in the day. Also met up with  padunk,  swiftjames,  tabykat, and  limitedvision before they needed to head to the basement to get ready for the Artists' Alley as well. Was great to see Taby again and meet Padu, Swift, and Skee in person for the first time ^^

After registering, I waited in line for the dealers den to open and happened to cross paths with  wintersnowolf and  littlebluewolfleo. To pass the time while we waited out the last few minutes before the door opened, I offered to have Rain do a quick sketch in my sketchbook, since I had it with me ^^ I hope to have that scanned and posted sometime soon, in addition to other sketches I had done. I'll have some previews of those on my Twitter later tonight, hopefully.

Much of Friday midday was spent just catching folks I could find and saying hello and getting the lay of the building and dealer/artist rooms figured out. So many artists I know of that I kept seeing o3o A squeaky possum was I. The evening was spent hanging out with the Swifts and sketching before Grimm, Anju, and I departed back to our room with Leon before turning in for the night.

Saturday started a bit early, heading to the Artist Alley with the goal of getting an image from  strype, though I'll admit I was a bit nervous since I'd never had the chance to get art from him before. Anju gave me a few nudges of encouragement to follow through while I stood there pondering ideas. I'm very glad he did, as the result that I picked up later that afternoon was so very worth it~ owo

Bought a couple other things in the dealers' rooms and wandered around some more, watching the suit parade with Anju before heading up to get some rest then meeting up with Padu and crew to go get some Chicago deep dish pizza. After getting back, Padu and James decided to call it a night, since Taby was already worn out from the day and sleeping by that point. So, bidding goodnight, Grimm and I headed up to hang out with  badgerben,  popalopolis,  blyzzarde,  ritts,  rowyin, Leon, Anju, and several others who's names escape me at the moment, up in one of the suites. Sat around and watched them draw for a while before Grimm, Anju, and Leon started to wear out to the point that they wanted to head back to get ready for bed. Being the odd one out in that regard, I was fine to stay up longer and continue hanging out, but I decided to tag along back rather than try and sneak in a late hour once they were asleep. Out in the hall, we thought someone had spilled something while doing some cleaning. We shrugged and carried on, opting to take the skybridge series back since it had already been rather cold and breezy when we'd been out for pizza several hours prior, and I hadn't taken the bridges yet during the convention. What a decision that proved to be. As we crossed the first one, we saw a bunch of emergency vehicles down below pulling up to the main building's entrance, with more coming down the road. That's when we started to realize that something might be more amiss than we had thought. Sure enough, by the time we got back to our place, siren after siren could be heard racing down the street as the main hotel started to be cleared out. It seemed like half of Chicago was showing up to take care of the situation. We kept in touch with folks as things became known.

I still marvel at how good our timing was with the event o.o; I had several people get in touch about my safety and wellbeing, both during the incident and the next morning, and for that I'm grateful. I really appreciate that, guys. As shown above, I could have just as easily been caught up in the thick of it had a couple things been just a tiny bit different, as we had been up near where it started. I'm just glad everyone was alright when all was said and done.

Anyway, next day we headed over to resume the convention and see how things had faired and get updates. Helped Padu, James, and Skee empty their room so they could check out. Artist Alley was pretty quiet since many were sleeping in after being evac'd that night. Crossed paths with  geckoguy123456789, who gave me his last couple buttons that he'd been passing out to artists X3 That was a cool surprise, indeed, as I also hadn't realized until the day before that he was even attending, me being tipped off that he was around after seeing his buttons at the tables of a few folks.

After parting with Gecko, I picked up a couple more things in the dealers' room before we all went up to hang out and draw for a bit more before Padu, James, and Skee had to leave for their flight. In the process, saw Strype again, as well as  daigo,  iko, and a couple others ^^ After seeing them off, a few of us met back up with Ben's group and we drew some more and watched a few movies before finally parting ways to get our respective bags packed up to head out. Got a couple more sketches in my book by that point, as well, in addition to asking Leon about a couple of his prints and getting two of them.

Monday was pretty uneventful as I watched the remaining part of our groups trickle out the doors to head home, myself being the last to leave since my train wasn't until evening. The trip itself was likewise uneventful for the first part of the journey, though as a neat highlight, a gentleman offered to pay for my dinner after I let him tag along with my reservation in the dining coach. He said he'd pay and to just go ahead and pick whatever I wanted o.o I was quite surprised and thankful. 't was very polite of him to offer.

Tuesday got interesting, as we stopped near a station in Maryland to give a few passengers a smoke break a couple blocks from the station. As we started forward to continue to the station, the train suddenly lurched to a halt, the conductor coming up shortly after to demand to know who had pulled the emergency brake. Turned out one of the passengers, rather than wait and catch up with the train once it had stopped again, had opened an additional door on the way out -- which was already breaking the rules -- and had jumped back aboard and yanked the cord (at least, from what we could gather from the reports by the crew as they got things going again later). Since no one was quick to own up, we got delayed a full hour, police involved and everything. But, once he was found out and removed from the train, we got back underway, though the crew was certainly fuming, as almost undoubtedly the crews of two delayed freight trains that were just up the tracks were, too. There's a reason pulling that brake cord is taken so seriously.

But aside of that, got home with few other issues. Just a weather delay on an inbound train to DC where it was to pick folks up to continue south.

*Whew* So there's my convention journal X3 Probably my longest in quite a while. As I said, I'll see about scanning the sketches sometime soon and getting them posted. I'll drop a link here for the Twitter previews when I get that done, as well. (Edit: Twitter link https://twitter.com/IdahoFox/status.....22178779406336 ) And pardon me if I left out a name or two. So many cool peeps that I met, and still others I wanted to but wasn't able to, that I've just been losing track trying to remember them all o.o;

Anyway, take care all ^^ And perhaps we can do it again next year~ I had a blast!~

Just finishing stuff up before heading out. If you're going, hope to see ya there!

As mentioned in the previous journal, for those on Twitter keep an eye on https://twitter.com/IdahoFox I'll see about posting stuff during the weekend ^^

Catch you guys around, and hopefully there will be art and stories a-plenty upon my return~

Since it's not a bad idea to have redundancy, I felt I probably should mention there are other places I can be found for contact if any given site happens to go down.

Twitter is probably one of the better ones. Same username as here, IdahoFox. Mostly replies still, as far as activity, but I do occasionally throw out random thoughts and stuff that's not as fandom-related.

I'll also see about posting a few more images soon. Still working on a couple projects in the meantime as well.

And yet I feel no different X3 But what an interesting year it's been, though. So many folks I've met, become friends with, and had great times with ^^ Here's to another year of fun with you all! :3

Yeah, it does seem rather silly of them to skip 9, but I have a hunch that it's actually a really simple answer as to why they did it:
Allow me to point to the video game series of Final Fantasy and Mother.

With Mother, there are three major installments that are out there, known in Japan as simply Mothers 1-3. Only Mother 2 came to the States, but since there was no Mother "1", it couldn't easily be released as Mother 2, so was thus renamed Earthbound.
Likewise with Final Fantasies 1-7. In the States, only a couple of them were released, and to keep from leaving holes, the numbers were changed, such as Japan's FF4 --> US's FF2, and Japan's FF6" --> United States' FF3.

If we look at the basic chain of Windows version from the DOS era through the current line we have:

Windows 1, 2, 3, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8

Notice that if you count them, 7 and 8 are one short of what they "should" be. So, in short, I think it was less the "dull-witted" move on Microsoft's part that some folks are wondering about, and is actually them making a simple correction in numbering by using the next version as a "correction" number; much like Final Fantasy 7 did for both the United States and Japan.

Anyway, just my random thoughts on the matter X3

Go figure the day I post the journal, the problems are resolved ^^; Such is my luck, I swear...

Anyway, one thing I wanted to ask folks before all that networking nonsense happened was in regards to fursuits. Many suiters have a lint roller but I'm wondering if anyone has tried those newer silicone-esque lint rollers advertised on television? They seem like they would be rather handy and not needing to tear off the sheets as often since the roller just needs to be rinsed. I'll probably do some tests myself, but I thought I'd put the question out there for some possible feedback.

So, for the past several days, my internet connection has been complete garbage. Things seem to "work" every couple minutes in fits and starts, but take 4, 5, 6+ refreshes to either get anything at all aside of a "Connection timed out", or to get what manages to get through to display right. Doing my own checks, I seem to be suffering more than 80% data loss at any given time. I've had pages that normally take about 10-15 seconds to load taking 20 minutes of effort (or just flat waiting) to load at times. I could put up with a slow connection (I've used 56k, and slower, modems before over the years) if it weren't so blasted inconsistent and flaky.

So, if some have wondered where I've been or why I've not as active the past few days with comments, replies, and messengers, that's why. Basically dealing with an internet connection doing its best to provide an insulting imitation of dial-up x.x

On a more humorous note, when I called the provider to inquire about the outage/poor connection, I got a busy signal. I've never called a toll-free number and had that happen before o.o; First time for everything, I guess ^^;

So, I have plans to go to MFF in December, but I've run into a small problem. My existing plans for rooming haven't as yet worked out. Is there anyone going who's looking for an additional person?

I'm more asking now, rather than waiting to the last minute. Everything else is good to go, just need a room spot. If anyone gets word on a spot, let me know, please. Comment or note works to get things rolling.

In other news, I am trying to work on some drawings, just been a bit busy of late with classes restarting.

Sure, I'll tag along for the ride with the meme going around ^^ Write an assumption you have about me, and I'll reply to it whether you're correct or not.

Stay safe with whatever fireworks you interact with for the occasion.

I'd also like to give a shout out and a thank you to the servicemen and -women both Stateside and around the world doing their parts to help make sure that Independence Day continues to hold its meaning for this nation.

In the spirit of the day, I'd also recommend reading the document signed on this day. Wikipedia has a nice transcription of the Declaration here; though if you're feeling a little more adventurous, the image at the top of the page is a high resolution version of the script-written document, itself ^^

So what are everyone's plans for the occasion?

A while back I asked in a journal about lighting preferences and got a variety of responses and discussions from folks. I thought I would revisit that slightly by sharing an image from the UK Telegraph (though I have seen it elsewhere) http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia.....s_1599379i.jpg What's interesting to me is how little difference there is between units in the thermal image, most notably the incandescent and CFL bulbs. The only one that stands alone much is the legacy LED bulb. Let's keep in mind that LED units have gotten better since then, too. I have a few even newer ones myself that are not only less than half the cost of the style in that image but also don't have/need the heavy cooling veins, either.

I have some speculations as to why some aspects of the units in the photo are as similar as they are, but I'm also curious what you guys think of the image.

Tagged by  jsfreeman ^^

Comment on this journal and I will...

1) Tell you something I learned about you by looking at your FA page for 10 seconds.
2) Tell you a color you remind me of.
3) Tell you my first memory of you.
4) Ask you a question.
5) Tell you something I like about you.
6) Tell you the object that is in front of me.
7) Dare you to do this yourself in your own journal.

Had a nice time visiting. My friend was in Baltimore and he was inviting me to visit some places in DC. Air and Space Museum and the National Archives were the main places he and I went during my short visit.

My friend had not been to either of those buildings before. He had a lot of fun ^^ I still think it's pretty cool to be able to see the founding documents, a Douglas DC-3 and a myriad of other aircraft, Apollo 11's capsule, and touch a piece of the moon all in one day.

Just as a heads up for folks ^^ I've got an old friend from back home visiting in the area that I'll be meeting up with, so I may not be checking messages much until Saturday night Sunday morning or so. But I'll still see if I can check messages during that time.

Anyway, catch ya guys later ^^ In the meantime, enjoy this piano interpretation of Chai Kingdom from Super Mario Land.

Yep ^^ Got a new icon. An animated one this time around, too~ Made by  lycheepuddn

I was getting a drink a little bit ago and as I was heading back to my computer, I noticed that my family was watching The Big Bang Theory.

Nothing out of the ordinary so far, until I noticed that the local television affiliate is running a word-of-the-day contest regarding the show. Curious, I watched the text blurb on the screen to read it and noticed something: They've named the contest "Bangin' Word of the Day". I understand what they're getting at with the naming, but I think they could have chosen their words a little better X3 I was laughing pretty hard for a bit after I saw that.

So for a happier note after Saturday's fiasco, I got things back to normal. And to end off the day yesterday, I played some World of Warcraft with by buddy Steslos, who's been asking for a while. I'd never played WoW before, so it was an interesting experience ^^; Honestly, it's a fun game. RPGs and MMOs are a bit out of my usual depth, so there was a lot to learn, but I may well play a while longer yet ^^

Good god what an ordeal... I just spent the past 4 hours purging crap from my computer after a mis-aimed mouse click. Initially, my computer was choking so bad and so fast that all cores were maxed and I could barely get it to respond. Had to knock it out just to even reboot it to find out what the hell I was up against >.<

Anyway, I think I've got everything of the BS-ware purged and more-or-less back to normal. Had some setbacks but I didn't lose any of my files (that I know of, yet). Still not sure if everything is okay. I couldn't put it to sleep properly a few minutes ago. I've had computers glitch and do that before and sort themselves after a restart, but I'm wary. Fortunately, I do have my laptop (which is where I'm typing this from) available with backups and have my art stuff installed on it, if more drastic measures are needed.

In the meantime, I am going to go pass out and sleep. Do pardon me if I'm still a bit pissy at times about it later on today. *grumbles as he tiredly flops onto his bed*

My possum pal  lycheepuddn is currently offering commissions. She does some really nice work in a range of styles. I've gotten a number of pieces from her and they are all really lovely~

Here's a link to her journal with more information https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/5617403/ and check out her gallery for samples of the work she does.

And what a great time the convention was! The con is only a couple years in, but I can definitely see it growing a fair amount in the coming years.

Met up with TabyKat, BadgerBen, AgentGrimm, as well as several buds from the central Virginia area. So much fun hanging out with everyone! Lots of fun art and suits to see ^^ Looking forward to the next time we can all meet up! Had fun swapping art stories amongst the crew and getting some art tips along the way, too. There'll be some neat sketches to post once I get them scanned.

The only hiccup over the weekend didn't really involve the convention itself, to speak of. Some weather rolled in and caused me delays in getting home. However, much thanks to Zalno for letting me stay in his room the added night on such short notice. (When I parted ways with Taby and Grimm on Sunday, I fully expected to just head home. Soon found out that it wasn't advisable).

But, the weather aside, I had a great time with everyone ^^ Definitely looking forward to the next get-together with everyone :3