Drawing a bunch of characters in indulgent Victorian inspired outfits.
Posts authored by leems
old art
When I was looking for my old cartoon portraits, I ran across these. Ah! Nostalgia.
Excerpt of Penelope Sea and Ocean End
I’ve talked about it, and I have constantly deflected questions and nagging from a friend who thinks it is good and I ‘need to get off my butt and edit it already.’ Penelope Sea and Ocean End is the first book I ever wrote. It’s not even 20,000 words – which is hilarious in light of my NaNoWriMo endeavors.
Well, I can finally say that I have edited it. Just finished. And I have tackled all the things about it that I didn’t like and that had kept me from editing for so long because I thought it was going to be difficult. Silly me.
I want to say ‘project done.’ It feels good. I get to cross something off a list now and go on to finish another unfinished manuscript.
I’ve also been given the order to shop it around to publishers, so I guess I’m going to try that. If I should fail, you can be assured that I’ll just end up posting the entirety right here, like I do with my comic submissions. Until that day, I’ll give you Chapter One.
PENELOPE SEA AND OCEAN END
Chapter 1
Penelope Sea sat alone at the end of a lunch table in the cafeteria of her new elementary school. She hadn’t made any friends yet. She didn’t want to make new friends She wanted to be with her old friends, in her old school, in her old town. All the children here looked at her funny, and the food that the pink-haired lunch lady served didn’t taste right. Although she had only been enrolled in Dolphin Elementary for one week, Penelope decided she definitely did not like it here.
The only thing Penelope did like about having moved towns, moved houses, and moved schools was her very own personal house key. She wore it on a shiny silver chain around her neck. Penelope was only eight. She thought she was special because after school she got to stay at home while her parents worked.
More Sparkles
Portraiture
Long ago and far away when I used MySpace and not Facebook, I only ever had cartoon portraits of myself in my photo albums. I was recently told that these were missed, so I pulled them out of obscurity (they are up on the Art page too).
Free Online Course Materials
Do you want to learn something today? If you are anything like me then you like to gather up little pieces of information like hermit crabs collect junk. But this stuff is far from junk: MIT OpenCourseWare | Free Online Course Materials puts MIT Course Materials online for anyone to access. Crazy awesome, or is it just me? I know I’m not getting the lectures, but dude! Kids pay good money to go to MIT.
Speaking of good money. If you really want lectures, Yale’s got some Open Courses as well.
little obsessions
I am absolutely fascinated by eyewear that is designed to augment our most perfect natural abilities to visually process the world around us. I have much less than perfect natural vision abilities. Some of my most stressful dreams have something to do with driving a speeding car without my glasses. I fantasize about waking up some day without needing to put corrective lenses on. I’m horribly envious of 20/20 vision. And thus, when frolicking through science journals, I am helplessly captivated by contacts and glasses that do even more than ‘fix’ vision.
For instance, over on NewScientist (back in 2011 – hello GReader starred list) there are glasses that read the body language and expression of the person you are interacting with and give you clues about the best way to proceed in your conversation. And then on BBC News, animal trials are wrapping up for contacts that stream emails and text messages directly over our vision of the world around us. I imagine a blending of our physical and online existences. I imagine not knowing which is which until the glasses are off. It makes me think of the anime Dennō Coil. It’s a really good anime. I have to watch it through again. And lest you think my mind is not just a repetitive circle, I am going to dig up some posts from the old Bean on exactly the same topic. After the…Continue reading little obsessions
“Guerilla Open Access Manifesto”
If you are in academia you are probably at least aware of the growing Open Access movement. I think of it basically as Creative Commons for scholars, and this doesn’t really mesh well with the pre-existing publishing model that scholars and academics have been using for ages. The Internet Archive has full text of the “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto”. It’s short and sweet and strong and well thought.
"Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves."
Having the flu
I had the flu most of Christmas break. This is one of the few drawings I managed to squeeze out of my mind/hand while I was sick. I found it. And now that the memory of how terribly I felt is almost gone, I kind of like the drawing. It could be a good logo or tattoo for something or other, except that it has my face on it.
Klockwerks by Roger Wood
The regulator in our living room is stopped right now. The wall across from the TV was not a good place for a chiming clock in the apartment of movie watchers. But gee have I loved time pieces. And I have fallen in love with Klockwerks by Roger Wood. I mean, look at them. Aren’t they beautiful?
girly art
The Cartoon Crier
The Cartoon Crier, shared on ISSU, is a gorgeous comic magazine and far far from any semblance of a funny paper:
“Sorrow and woe is the focus of this free 36-page newspaper tabloid that highlights the work of The National Cartoonists Society members and of The Center for Cartoon Studies’ community.”
Random conspiracy theory generator
GReader starred items strike again! Introducing the Random conspiracy theory generator. So far my favorite – time in the Alaskan wilderness causes breast cancer in: Verified Facts About The Census Bureau and Unemployment.
Gratuitous cat love
While I was trying to snap a shot of her angry face she kept looking away. I ended with with all these pictures and no good one. boo. I suppose it just makes the good pictures of her more amazing:
LibriVox
When no one else is around I read aloud to my pets. Though, I have tested the limits of my reading aloud lately, resulting in a long standing sore throat, I am intrigued by LibriVox » Volunteer for LibriVox. I will probably volunteer and get an assignment and read things aloud so that those things might be listened to by people all over the internets. In my voice even.