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It is fun to make pictures

Third monochrome image post in a row! This one actually serves a purpose: it’s a very rough (and lazily photoshopped) mockup of what I have in mind for the cover of the Anacrusis book.

Brendan Adkins:  Ommatidia

Image credits: the human eye came from a really nice BY-SA macro shot called fóvea, and the bug eye from a BY-ND shot called drosoph. The latter makes me unhappy, because I’m clearly deriving from a NoDerivs work, but I can’t find the photographer’s contact info to ask permission. If you are the photographer, please write me! Oh, and also write if you have a strong opinion about the cover.

I bet you were hoping for another 400-pixel-wide grayscale image from me today! You are so lucky.

I am obsessed with a particular shot from the first-season finale episode of Veronica Mars (notice how much restraint I have been using in posting about Veronica Mars? NOTICE). I am also obsessed with dark-tinted monochrome images. So here’s a desktop! (All links are zipped BMPs.)

Logan says come here

1600 x 1200

1280 x 1024

1024 x 768

800 x 600

Messing around with my lightbox and some of the more striking images from the Brick trailer. This isn’t quite what I want yet, but it’s getting there:

A girl in geisha makeup in front of a broken mirror, shielding her head.

The same image, reduced to three colors of construction paper.

Click for the 100k version.

There’s probably a Photoshop filter that does this automatically, but I don’t care. I’ll make a wallpaper or something out of this later, and I have more like it that I want to do. It is such a PRETTY trailer. Also, apparently it’s not coming out in Louisville this Friday after all, so I’ve got time to kill.

10,001 points

Saved from the LJ comment feed, here’s William’s follow-up to Winter:

Spring falls hard, sprawls awkwardly on the ground. “Goddamn it,” he mutters. Then louder, to the air in general, “this better not set a theme!”

Caleb helps him up, his face full of apology. Spring swats him away, muttering about ‘respect’ and ‘kids these days’. He brushes the dew from his trousers and winces.

“Are you okay?” asks Chyler.

Spring doesn’t respond: he’s just noticed the stains on his suit. He looks like he’s about to have kittens.

After about a second, they realise he’s forgotten they’re there. They hurry off, feeling slightly uneasy.

“Aw, man,” Spring mourns. “These were new.”

I kind of wish we’d had Facebook lo, those many years ago when I was referring to coeds by pseudonyms (note that I’d already learned to fear Google).

I read Dr. Weston’s post above and was a little startled to note that people are using a pretty new website to provide that kind of (subjectively) important social function. Then I’m like, what were class rings? What were letter jackets? They weren’t totems, magically created out of pure student ardor; they were business items co-opted by people seeking to fill exactly the same gap.

Right now people searching for breakdancing videos still comprise the vast majority of my bandwidth users. That’s just not right, and we should fix it. But how, you say? By shooting breakdancers. The end!

Oh, and also: Jon’s got a new EP out, and you can download it! It’s called West State Line and it’s amazing to hear his music finally given the pro treatment it deserves. There are snares and backing vocals and even a little bit of string! Let’s listen to it together! I’ll make popcorn! I will also make calf eyes at you.

My favorite parts so far are Ghost Town, especially the bridge, and Meg White, which needs to be an indie anthem.

Sumana and Leonard are getting married, and that is joyous and perfect, and is it okay if I’m a little bit thrilled to see the particular format in which they told us about it?

CONGRATULATIONS, LEONARD AND SUMANA!

I am a big fan of refurbished electronics and appliances, despite the fact that they are maybe the worst things to get refurbished (rapid depreciation, complicated things that if they broke once, etc). I also display a startling brand loyalty to KitchenAid. Thanks to Simply Recipes, I found a refurbished, fairly high-end KitchenAid blender on Amazon for less than half price, with free shipping. You can guess the result.

Tuesday everybody brought stuff to try in smoothies, and Wednesday Maria and I experimented with chocolate pseudomalts and strawberry-orange slushies. Last night I found it difficult to establish a decent texture for a real milkshake; Maria found recommendations online that say if you’re using skim milk (we do), stick it in the freezer for ten minutes first. I firmly intend to do so.

Basically, I’ve enabled myself to drink ice cream. If I were a betting man, and I were in a boxing match against getting fat? I would put my money on getting fat.

You can spell cataloging with or without the U

Hammering on the theme of my inability to escape YA literature, LibraryThing has apparently added a new statistic: the average publication year of your books. I haven’t catalogued everything I own quite yet, but still, did it have to be 1996?

When I get a chance to sit down and do it, cataloging on LibraryThing is one of my favorite, most meditative activities. I compare it to Scrooge McDuck taking a swim in the Money Bin.