Well... since it's been ages i've posted anything, I guess I should explain what's been going on... (not that anyone reads journals anyway) :P

My time has been spent figuring out and attempting to configuring Inkscape for inking purposes, mainly the Live Path Effects. (LPE)
The default LPE stroke effects are limited, so I had finished making a list of some custom LPE strokes to replace them.
Now a "Triangle In, Ellipse" now scales correctly (1=1px, not 1=10px) and varying fade percentages can be pasted. (example: start fading in at 50% length)

As expected though there are still many bugs present, such as if a node is angled (not smooth) the stroke becomes pinched. (a "black hole" node)
For such lines I still have to do the old time-consuming "Stroke to Path" and manually modify nodes to get a fade... but at least now I suppose it's not all the time.
Also converting the LPE to a path does have the high chance of creaing a parasite node, where one node suddenly becomes two sharing the same spot.

I do know of the proposed "Power Strokes" feature planned for 0.49, but with 700+ bugs in it's Launchpad list that'll be possibly a year away... if real lucky...

Attempted to make patterns as well but applying/modifying that failed miserably... bleh... soo much time wasted there...

Tried to use it for coloring but kept hitting brick walls with it's limits/hangs/crashes, clearly just not designed for such things i'm trying. ^^;
Tested a Windows build of Krita in the hopes that would be suitable replacement, but sadly the tablet support is still completely broken. (shame since the brush sub-sampling appears much better than GIMP)
-sigh- ...Why the GIMP developers would shun the brush sub-sampling improvement I just don't understand, it was even shown to be possible many years ago.

...oh my little poor dial-up, why must you keep getting more poor and unstable nowadays? I can hardly use you most of the time... >.<

After a long wait we've now got season 2 over here, with 2 volumes of 10 episodes currently released so far. (as usual it's a long wait for the other three volumes like last time)
The collector's box unfortunately didn't have an action figure included this time around, could be maybe a buggy box or cost-cutting.
...wonder if Derpy actually makes it through uncut.

Also got Air Gear volume 28 as well... this seems quite the nice day i'm having. ^_^

Unfortunately my recent submission had to be removed from my gallery as requested, I'm deeply sorry for any confusion/trouble this may have caused.

Now it's officially 20% cooler. ^_^

Finally after what seemed like would never happen, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic DVD's got released in New Zealand, so I quietly took my time to check it out.
(more like rushed, but you can't prove that) :P
Unfortuantely only two discs out of five are available at the time, making ten episodes of season 1 in total.
Though the collectors box does come with a Flutterdash "action figure" to make up for the delays, Would have preferred a Luna or NightmareMoon one personally but can't be picky. (I also see what they did with their "creative" naming)
On that note NightmareMoon's screentime was lame, only one episode's length in total? Really wish she was around for much longer. ;_;
A plus has been I was worrying Pinkie-Pie would be your "stereotype girly-girly" but she is suprisingly enjoyable and very likeable, hillarious even. ^-^

...Also the look on my father's face was... umm... priceless to say the least. XD

Bah... Having such a hard time getting online these days with my dial-up, and it just keeps getting worse.
If it's not having to disconnect/redial multiple times to get a stable connection, it's also running out of hours due to ever increasing file sizes and updates.
$70+ gives me 150 hours per month on to play with, in case your wondering that also includes the $50+ just to have a phone line.
Yes I could switch to broadband, but currently that's still not available where I live.
Not that i'd currently matter anyway as the minimum's $90 for a 400MB per day cap, don't really have that type of cash.
As such things like Livestream I can't view, annoying since everyone's seeing/doing it. -_-
But since all the copper cables and the only Southern Cross fibre-optic cable are all owned by one private company i doubt it'll change in my lifetime.

To take my mind of it i've been trying to learn how to digital ink.
Damn it's very hard, always seem to keep failing all the time. ^^;
Still yet to find a balance between responsive but shaky and smooth but insanely-laggy. Typical, the one time you really don't want your tablet to be accurate... ^^;
Rich Cintiq users will probably disagree, though I don't have $1,800 for even the smallest model. o.o

Urgh... Damn stupid ringing of my ears, haven't been able to get any sleep for days if not weeks. Worst part is it'll never go away... >_<
Hmm... wonder if chibi is allowed here anymore, what with the possible risk of it being easily miss-labelled as cub?
Would hate to upload sketches and be banned simply because the obvious difference can't be noticed. o_o;

Naruto Shippuden is rated M (mature) on DVD, got up to Collection 4 so far. ^_^
On the other hand Naruto Shippuden on Cartoon Network is rated downwards as PG.
As such I had a hunch they'd butcher it just like the first series, and sadly straight of the bat Konohamaru's "Sexy Jutsu" scene in episode 1 is clearly cut out/missing. o.o
So... shurikens poking out of a blooded body is okay, but a clean/tastful and cleverly covered-up female is somehow too offensive for western viewers? Oh WTF is wrong with AUS/NZ!? >.<
I was hoping there'd be more respect for anime here but instead it's the usual "It's animation and therefore only for kids/Oh won't somebody pleeeease think of the children" crap. -_-

The first series and the current new one, is clearly not for children and as such should've been simply shown at a later time-slot. I know because i've seen the DVDs of it, so there's literally going to be an awful bucket-loads lot of missing scenes.
Editing it to make a PG slot because you think it's only a child's show is beyond wrong and a slapping-insult to those like myself that love anime.

If you had kept your Adult Swim then you could've put it there untouched and out of reach of those too young for it...
...but oh that's right, you said some "parented" child might accidentially stumble on it at midnight and be permanently scarred for life. -hah... yeah right-

Then again, the channel does come from a country where they still don't have an R18+ rating, so I shouldn't be suprised.

As such i'm hoping to buy the first Naruto box-set so I can finally see all of that uncut, but at $400 it looks like it'll be a long wait.

Finally got myself back on AIM.
Was a hassle how they won't send you a confirmation e-mail but luckily my old account still exists, suprised it was still around after all this time. ^^;

To all that faved recently i'd like to say a big "many thanks!" to you all, i'm soo deeply shocked, delighted and happy for them. XD
Usually I thank the faver with a comment, but I don't think I can manually reply to 82 faves, to try and do so would be insane... not to mention maybe cruel on the FA servers. ^^;

Stupid eye of mine has been a pain, started to hurt a lot if on one side or the other when sleeping.
Got a private laser exam for $300 (don't bother with public health care, it's a joke here) but luckily found nothing wrong inside. (doesn't explain the pain)
Just when that was relaxing back down I got a possible retina burn, from when I was using a blue grid at the time.
Check showed no burn and took a week to disappear, seems I have to cut back my PC time even more and more... -_-
Then Vista's "reset to device: raid port 0 was issued" bug struck me and it totally corrupted my disk.
Unlike previous damages this one was non-bootable or repairable, even the Vista recovery disk said it did not recognise the OS?
So had no choice but to reformat and reinstall everything I could, luckily Photoshop CS3 did let me re-activate it.
Disabled Superfetch as that was yet again trying to prefetch literally ALL of my files on ALL of my disks. Sure it's fine and fast if you have no files, but once you have over 100,000 per disk it literally chokes and eats memory like crazy.
...Then came the Vista updates, or should I say Vista crapdates?
Really microsoft... What's the point of providing a fully signed driver on there, when your new "Program Compatibility" recommended update thinks it and all other signed drivers are un-signed and must be blocked? Oh, and then can't be fully un-installed? >.<
As such had to use System Restore multiple times, as some of their so-called "recommended updates" only caused malfunctioning misery.
But then had to disable System Restore as it was caught in an eat-disk update loop error, literally just kept going for hours and hours and hours... o_o
After all that there is one program I can't install anymore, MSN Messenger.
Why? Because the only available MSN is 2011 and now needs Vista's SP2 to install, since I only have SP1 i'm left with no MSN anymore. ;_;
It's physicially impossible to download on dial-up as if you try and cancel/pause a download, it'll still keep downloading. Disconnect and Windows Update then becomes corrupted.
Of course it's not available until you install all the other crap/broken updates anyway.
Guess I have no choice but to slowly save up $600NZ for Windows 7.
As if some of their "Windows updates" are messed up, then i'm certain SP2 will also include those updates and as such won't work. -_-

Don't think much about Photoshop right now, seem to be learning about it's bad side more than the good...

First there's the Jagged Lines bug. Seems caused by the cursor being too accurate, kinda funny how not having a brush lag may actually be a curse.

Second it corrupted both my main and backup .PSD file, was recoverable but then it may explain why most of the layers mysteriously moved around by one pixel? (not joking) o.o

Thirdly the stupid Scratch Disk (SD) system literally decides to go and corrupt my entire Hard Disk.
They know everyone has gigabytes of free memory spare to use these days, so why they still use such an unstable prehistoric system is beyond me. >_<

Only plus is it was my backup disk, if I was using my main as the SD I wouldn't be able to write this rant down... I don't know whether to laugh or cry about that.

Tried repairing the disk, but Vista's crappy chkdsk says there's still 100,000+ file records/security descriptors present... even though there's literally no files on it.
So forced with no choice but to delete the whole partition and re-format, with a 500GB disk this takes forever.

Got 49% done so far after 5 hours, probably another 5 more left if I am lucky and nothing goes wrong.

Sigh... Nothing new yet again... Really hoping this year doesn't turn out like the last, makes me all isolated and non-talkative.

When the temperature and humidity is low enough (damn I hate these hotter summers) I have been trying to learn from scratch what I have been doing wrong all these years art-wise... and it's been quite a few "wrong" ways I have.

Primary one was how I colored ink lines...
Usually one has a single ink layer with it's transparency locked, which is then colored with a brush.
But I was having a layer for each seperate color line, each placed above or below depending on it's depth in relation to others.
At the time I thought it was making things easier as I could then change each line's color, but when you pass 300+ layers, (most of it inks) then it's obviously only making things worse.

Did discover a group folder can have it's own mask, maybe that should be a better way to color a single ink layer.

Was also hoping to ditch the path tool it in favor of using the tablet like everyone else does, but discovered my PS-CS3 on a Vista x64 has the nasty "Jaggy lines" bug. o.o;
So rather than using the tablet's resolution like it's supposed to, it'll downgrade and use the monitor's instead.
Zooming in at 200% or higher seems a workaround but not really practical, anything on or under 100% and it's messy stair-lines... yes even with a ruler. >_<
I know it's not my tablet or it's drivers, also can rule out Vista as even GIMP behaves correctly.
Does seem to be a Photoshop issue, probably would have not gotten it if i knew it had this... lot of time wasted trying to fix this "$1,000 pain in the ass" with no luck. -_-
Adobe supposedly has a patch available that some are saying fixes it, but they want me to pay $600NZ to find out if it works or not? O_O;

Oh wow, 5 months and nothing new... this growing record i'm not proud of. -_-

Been spending most of the time learning from scratch how to use Photoshop when I can... taking care of my eye takes higher priority these days. ^^;
Mostly it's looking at other's works (their ink lines) and trying to duplicate the same quality best I can, lots of stroke with brush, resize, repeat with different brush... zzz...

I'm not yet used to the strange softness of the brushes and a lack of directly stroking a path, but i'll learn to adjust.

Though these non-destructive vector masks are looking rather promising. ^_^

Suprisingly weird how despite having 4GB and a quad-core it'll refuse to fully use them, instead it'll use it's scratch disk and one CPU core for the path tool.
That did cause odd slowdown-stalls when playing music at the same time. o.o;
Using the backup HD as the scratch disk, Aero theme for the GPU and telling Winamp to not use CPU3 seems to have fixed it.

Still looking/researching a monitor replacement, can't believe how long and hard it is. >.<
Learning new bad things about them too: Such as TN's are all only 6-bits, and running 4:3 on a 16:9 monitor can supposedly damage them. (eh, not covered by warranty?)
An IPS panel is still my best bet, but since those are still expensive and rare...

Things wouldn't be a problem if they hadn't killed off the reliable CRT, now I know how 8-track lovers feel.

I so need to replace my old 19-inch CRT monitor, been needing to do it for ages now.
Being stuck at 1024x768 at 72hz is nasty on my eyes, and yes it's as high as it'll go... even though it's supposed to support bigger resolutions.

Now I was thinking i'd just go into a store, pick out a good LCD monitor based on specs and all would be better, right?
Nope. Seems it's still not the case when you look into it a bit closely...

Problem for me is the market is flooded with nothing but TN-based displays, which apparently are not suited for artwork as they don't do color well.
The same blue on the top-left is noticeably different from the bottom-right being one example i've noticed from some i've physically seen so far.

Alas consumers just don't seem to care about color quality-accuracy anymore, it's all only about how "fast" the refresh rate is. -_-

Read about those non-TN based displays available such as those by LaCie which are supposed to do color better, but goddess the cost... I simply don't have thousands in spare US dollars for something that fancy... -faints- O_O

Luckily these journals aren't read, so I guess I can safely rant. ^^;

Wow... Trying to use FurAffinity these days has been utter difficult if not impossible.
I'm guessing they have changed the server to be broadband-only, what with all the stalls and constant "timeouts" o.o
The only way I can view any submission now is with FlashGet, don't they know there are some countries that still don't have affordable broadband? (even if you can get it, it's too expensive-restricted) >_<

And as to the reason why there's "still" nothing new up, it's all because of a neighbour's noisy spa pool yet again. (they turned it off a while back, allowing me the chance to do the recent artwork)
When it starts up every hour for 10 minutes it's painful both in my ears and sometimes even my chest, really throws me off doing anything. -_-
More worser since I can only sleep when the turn-off timer kicks in around midnight, it sure as hell wakes me up in the morning... or even the dead for that matter.
This has been going on for well over a year now, which is my explaination as to not having anything new.
A foam padding base was installed, but didn't work since it turned out to be air-based instead of ground-based. (seems to have made it worser actually)

From the way things are going it seems i'll have no choice but to move.
Even though they can afford to run it while never using it at all, they can't afford to fix it... how typical of some people.

For all watchers i'm very sorry for the lack of anything new so far, I do have one draft sketch i'm working on nearly ready to transfer to a main but I seem to have an art-block regarding the arms. (poses are still alien to me) ^^;

Out of three box sets I recently purchased, 4 DVDs need to replace due to possible defects, with one of them being physicially obvious. o.o
That feels like a case of bad luck for me, would be nice if they made them out of glass and left the discs in the packaging. (they take them out since sadly some like to steal) >.<

Also i'm having such a bad time trying to use Fur Affinity, and it feels like it's getting worser what with these constant "time-outs" on submissions. >_<

http://superwailingbonus.com/farank/
Only heard about this from a submission link, I never liked these things for obvious reasons (my DA page :P ) but i'm glad this hasn't been added to FA's system... well at least I hope they aren't planning to add it. ^^;
As usual my darn curiosity of mine got the better of me so I took a look:

Rank: 3027 (94.39%)
Rating: 30447

-confused- ...okay... my poor dumb brain has literally no idea what all this number means, does this make me good or bad?
That 94.39% seems a lil too high for someone that only uploads once per month, and that's only on a good day. ^-^;

Roughly a week or so ago I had suffered what seemed to be a migrane, a first and very painful one i will say. ^^;
This seems to have left me with a slightly damaged left eye, which now shows a spot when I blink. >_<
It's more noticable when looking at something like a piece of white paper as an example, so that'll be "almost" fun trying to get used to it somehow. (i know my depth perception has always been bad, but this is just ridiculous) >.<
Even the usual PC using is now much more difficult what with the pain that likes to kick in at times, guess there's no more colouring untill I can find a solution in the form of possibly a new monitor.

I recently noticed a copy of Photoshop CS3 for about $975 and finally decided to get it, since due to a stock clearance for the new CS4 it's the cheapest price it'll ever be. ^^;
But however I can't use it just yet as I had already started working in GIMP before I got it and it's .PSD files doesn't save correctly for Photoshop, such as loss of Paths data and weird/damaged Layers. o.o
Strangely saddening for some reason, i've used GIMP for so long it's kinda hard to let it go, even if it's been a growing pain to use. ^^;

Probably won't make things better looking, but hopefully it'll make things a bit more easier.

Still having no luck finding a 64bit Vista scanner, or for that matter ANY type of scanner, as all the stores around here only have them built-in with printers... What is this, are they starting to become extinct like soundcards? o.o
Thinking about adding a better/usable paint program along with it as well, but I see Corel is still bloating Paint Shop Pro with junk/spyware and Adobe still seem to think $1,400+ for Photoshop is affordable. >_<

Finally got a new pc up and working... at least the best possible for a 64bit Vista. :P
Took a while getting the video card to work, as SP1 didn't like driver that came with the card. (downloading the updated 80MB driver via dial-up was only possible through FlashGet)
Still can't get the sound to fully work... and never will be able to, as from what i've seen online Creative have deliberately disable Wave-table Synthesis support in Vista. (am I the only one left that listens to the MIDI format? ) >_<
I could partition the disk and install XP, but that sounds a bit of effort/money just to play MIDI files.
Need to find either a non-creative-based Wave-table card, or some form of Wave-table emulator software. (Starting to seem unlikely) ^^;
Besides that nagging issue i'll need to find a new scanner, as I know for a fact the old one won't work with this thing. (it was never even XP compatible)

I fully knew about "Windows 7" around the corner, but just couldn't wait offline that long. ^^;

New system specs:
Case: Lian-Li PC-A12
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.4Ghz)
Motherboard: MSI P7N Diamond
RAM: Corsair 4GB DDR2 800Mhz 1.8v
GPU: MSI 8800GTS 512MB (G92)
PSU: Corsair HX620W
Hard Disk: Western Digital 500GB
Optical Drive: ASUS DRW-2014L1T DVD+R/RW Drive
Speakers: Creative Aurvana X-Fi headphones
Modem: Basic 56k dial-up PCI card (broadband's still out of reach here)

Internet! -tackles it- Oh my goddess! Literally so many months without any internet access, lost count how long it's been. ^_^
Geez! How am I supposed to go through all those submissions with only 56k dial-up?
May need some form of expensive sub-broadband? o.o;

I was supposed to upload a sketch many months before, but then the corrupting NTFS kicked in while Gimp was doing it's usual harsh demands on the HD's virtual memory.
All of this was caused by an imminent mechanical failure, hasn't happened yet but the growing signs means it will happen (probably spectacularly) if the HD is more used.
Only solution was to keep it off-limits (can't even look at it)until a new PC could be found to transfer all the data in hopefully one/two moves.
Had decided in a long-term interest to make the move to a new PC built on my own, no way I'm repeating my first mistake of buying an el-cheapo micro-case or a Dell whose specs are a little low. (even though they bundle Vista in them) ^^;
I never expected it to be this long, but then I never expected to be struck with not only the incompatibility, but also the "power disease" that some like to call it.
A month or so passed and it was taking longer than expected to save up $3,000, so I got an 80GB IDE disk to clone the failing 40GB as a possible temporary solution.
However the PSU suddenly made a lot of worrying clicking sounds literally the very second the power button was pressed, with the disks gaining/losing power constantly before the whole thing failed (gave up and turned itself off) only a second later.
Trying again with just the 80GB disk gave the same results, later found out the PSU simply doesn't have the minimum amps to handle it.
Hmm... I guess not only does this power disease affect CPU's and GPU's, (demanding PSU's measured in kilowatts if your into a dual card setup) but also the humble HD drives are hit, needing much more power (amps) than before.

Well, guess it does explain why attempting to use the CD drive always caused hard-restarts all the time, yet more proof never to buy a cheap pre-built system.

Replacing the PSU with one that would handle the new disk was sadly impossible, since 1: a standard ATX unit won't fit in a micro ATX compact cramped case.
2: PSU's use 24-pin plugs, whereas the old motherboard only uses a 20-pin.
3: A new motherboard means a new everything else. Can't plug in a AGP video card in a PCI Express 16x slot, DDR into DDR2 and so on.

Of course I still had to wait as PCI-Express x16 was being upgraded to the 2.0 version, Intel's newer 45nm Penryn chips (seems a lot for the 9650, may stick with a Q6600 till the depreciation value kicks in) and the Nvidia's newer 780i chipset. (3 dual-slot cards running at the same time? Seems insane the once humble PC) XD
Didn't seem the need to hold out for DDR3, (the 780i only supports DDR2 anyhow) since that's currently a lot more money for only a slight performance.

The current one I'm using now is an old AMD Duron 1.3ghz I've been given. It's only for temporary use as it's got bad sectors on the disk (which 99% of the time spread with my luck) and it's slower too, so there's no point in trying to plug in the tablet. (not to mention the entire table's needed for the new PC)
I still don't have all the components for the new PC yet, but I'm trying to get them one-by-one to be sure they are right for my needs and will hopefully last a while.

Only question left: 32bit OS for 3Gb Ram max. or 64bit OS for more than 3Gb Ram?

Oh. On another personal annoying note: Cartoon Network (the only channel on Sky that even showed a bit of anime) seemed fit to cancel the Adult Swim section at the start of this year. So no more Bleach, Inuyasha etc.... The existence of anime in this little island just keeps getting worse. >_<

...Great... Now I have no choice but to avoid using my computer asap, as i'm getting more frequent corruption errors and starting to lose even more files. Microsoft's NTFS file system is so horrible, the piece of crap doesn't even try to recover data. (sorry for cursing, but I just lost a few more files tonight) >_<
My only current plan is i'm now forced to seek an external hard disk drive that is compatible with this old com (one of those 500GB would be nice) to backup whatever I can, so when it does crash it'll hopefully only be the operating system.
As much as i'd love to get a new com they aren't cheap and i simply don't have the info on the new tech nor any money for it, replacing the HD's impossible as most/all are now SATA only. (mine's a 40GB IDE)

If there seems to be no life on this page or DA's then you'll know why.
Did finish one sketch for  mercury-chan though, so may see if I can tidy it up (hard when there's only 8bit gimp to work with) and upload it.

...
...urgh....
...Hard time sleeping these days, they had to put the 32nd america's cup at 12am, and in an area with almost no wind, only 5-8 knots isn't strong enough to for good sailing. (...and increasing the risk of things breaking) ^^;

Had finished playing Descent 3 too, hates me to say it but I can sadly see why it didn't sell well. -hides from the die-hard descent pilots-
Buggy even with a 1.4 or 1.5 patch, even the weapons are imbalanced.
Not really much in the longetivity/replay aspect, even the Mercenary addon was a HUGE letdown, only level 3 being average.
An incomplete and unusable D3edit didn't help either. Gets me thinking, isn't an expansion pack mean it's supposed to actually add something? o.o

Should've spent that money on Quake 3 Gold, which yes I still can't find, apparently discontinued (understandable due to age) but they really should keep spare copies in storage for just this reason.

Renewed my security for another year, of course installation was fun to say the least. (had to be installed three times, once due to com/cd reset, second due to corrupt install)
What happened to the good ol days where simply copying to a folder was all that was needed?
I don't care what they say but I do think software's going backwards in design and forwards in un-needed/bloated/highly-unstable complexity. ^^

Also frustrated as to what is it, nearly may? and still no art from me? Woopie me... a new record i'm not proud of.
Fully aware of what i'm supposed to be drawing at this time yes, but i'm still struggling on it along with a lil bit of the mind not being it's usual "happyness" i guess, Perhaps my art memory's going? o.o;
I see some that can churn out a great pic in well under a week, and even a day moan about "oh it was soo very hard to do, took me ages to finish"
I'm sorry as it's nothing personal honestly, but I still can't quite understand the "hard and took ages" part. ^^;

Ack, I feel all poor now, having to spend well over $600. o.o;
...maybe if i stare at this grey (and yet somewhat sexy) Wacom Intuos3 PTZ-630 A5 i'll feel better. X3
Won't improve my crud art, but may hopefully help speed things up. ^^;