Sketchy!

Look! A new "user picture" (a.k.a. icon, a.k.a. avatar, etc.)! Now for the story behind it.

You remember that I was planning to donate blood yesterday, correct? As it turns out, I did, and it went well. However, in my preparations for proceeding to the American Red Cross center where the blood drive was happening, I happened to get out my old sketchbook. Why? I needed a map from the bus stop to the donation center, and I didn't feel like using the printer.

Fortunately for me, however, the extended presence of a sketchbook in my general location inspired the urge to draw. Thus, after returning from the blood drive (and eating some Chinese food), I picked up the sketchbook and deliberated on what to draw. After innumerable a few flights of fancy in which I imagined that I'd miraculously become able to draw from imagination, I decided to try a self-portrait. After checking the mirror in my parents' bedroom and finding the lighting unsatisfactory, I proceeded to the bathroom.

Looking in the bathroom mirror, before turning on the light, I noticed that half my face was in shadow. I was suddenly inspired to try the 'noir'-y thing, and sketch only those features that were illuminated by the light from the window.

( This was the result. )

I actually intended to sketch more than this, but the involuntary quivering associated with standing still for so long got too severe, and I had to go sit down.

On the bright side, however, when I was converting the scanned image to GIF format, I tried an experiment which worked out pretty well (or at least interestingly): ( a 2-color GIF rendering. )

( And the same rendering, converted to black-and-white. )

---

You know, it's probably very telling that I spent (probably) more time scanning and manipulating the picture than I did sketching. And that I spend so little time sketching, period. Nevertheless, I'm kinda proud of this one.

Randomness!

http://www.livejournal.com/random.bml!

What I learned from this:

• The stereotypes about LJ are true.
  
• Most LJers post quite infrequently.
  
• A lot of LJers don't speak English.
  
• Someone has an LJ with only 2 posts containing only six words (including subject lines), and it got five times as many comments as mine.
  
• The other stereotypes about LJ are also true.
  
• "This journal has been deleted and purged." actually sounds kinda cool.
  
• There are an lot of really bad layouts, but they aren't the majority.
  
• Scratch that, they are the majority. Some of these are just painfully bad. Ultra-narrow columns? Inconsistent borders? Moronic color schemes? What's next, annoying Flash anims?
  
• Oh, marquees. I forgot the marquees. And the animated gifs.
  
• Ah, sweet irony. Someone hotlinked their background pic, and it says "Remote Linking Forbidden".
  
• Wow. A newsfeed with no articles. Funky!
  
• How many LJ accounts are there? 7.3 million? Then how did I randomly get the same one twice?
  
• No way. I actually found an interesting journal purely randomly. And it only took an hour or so of clicking. I'm gonna bookmark it.
  
• And ... back to the stupid. Black on black color scheme? Are they trying to look like idiots?
  
• Another repeat. At this point, I'm guessing that the Random feature is busted. I think I'll end the test here.

Right. Something's very wrong here; according to my calculations, there's less than one chance in a million of getting two repeat hits like this. I wonder if the LJ support people know?

Oh well. At least I found agrumer. I wonder if he'll mind my linking him?

Ooh, his Pigs and Fishes page looks interesting...