Start of class thoughts

For this semester of classes, I did not want a repeat of last semester, where I felt physically ill from the workload, which i lay plainly and gleefully at the feet of CS 142, an intro to programming course of 4 credits, but actually took over 20 hours of my week. But my hopes and wishes were dashed at the first class in which the professor announced that the workload would be the same as that despised class. But I get to develop my own web site, from idea to code to site. I am actually really excited. And by accidentally taking it in conjunction with a HTML/CSS class (I thought it was writing for the web, cause that is what the name was), i will have enough knowledge to strike out on my own and widen the unending horizons of the virtual frontier.
My drawing class, however seems just as difficult, if not more so, as i spent the 3 hours in class debating the meanings of words, truth and the meaning of art until I was about to collapse and beyond that. He is a strange man, picky, harsh but he is dedicated not only to making art but learning about the philosophy and meanings of and inside art. And all of this thinking, debating caused me to volunteer to sign my name in blood if that is what it took to learn the meaning of art, despite the responsibility of that knowledge. And strangely, it gives me comfort, because if the professor actually did ask for my signature one day, I would give it to him, and everything else he is asking us to sacrifice(such as ballpoint pens and twenty-five dollars for a compasses) seems meaningless. And it is meaningless beside the fact of becoming a person who has mastered art. I do not want to be a person who makes work that is nice or pretty, I want to make things that cause people to be filled with wonder, that cause them to think. I want to change the world with my art, and so resenting these small sacrifices is petty.And I would have never discovered this without going to such extremes.

You may think that signing is blood is weird and somewhat ominous or evil. Perhaps, but it was only a symbol of how far that we were going to go to learn. I believe he just wanted to weed out people who were not dedicated, as he spent the time not arguing with the students, telling us that he was a mean, crotchety, terrible old professor. (And the whole time I was wondering, does he still get paid if no one goes to his classes? Cause that would make sense)

Experimentations in printing

Here are my experimentations in printing over the past week:

In printing, ink is built up, white on the computer is no ink, so the paper shows through, and the ink is built up to black, where the ink is really thick. This is kind of obvious, but is the basic rule for printing on different papers.

Some tips for printing on different paper:
1.If the paper/cardboard is too thick, the printer will not accept it. I had some left-over cardboard back cover of a sketchbook, and it was too thick. But, on the oppisite side, thinner paper will not be able to hold the ink and will crumple or sag. So choose ap paper that is thick, but not too thick.
2.thick paint does not hold ink well(see #1), to ink over it, you need small splotches where you can form the picture around the paint and keep it understandable(see#6), unless you like the shadow of ink.
3.I am also assuming thick layers of color pencil does the same thing, but I need to test it. Thin layers looks cool though(see #4).
4.paper already printed on only works if it is matte, not slick. Slick just makes the ink pool on top.
paper that is already dark doesn't work too well, as ink only adds darkness on top, stick with light to medium shades.
5.Also highly contrasting shade variation in patterns doesn't work too well, unless the pattern is small (see #2). But patterns with similar shades looks cool.
6.Check the color of the hue first, especially if it is gray, it looks kinda weird if you guess that the hue is yellowish, so you make the photo green only do find out the gray is actually a greenish-gray.

Next: printing on homemade paper.
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Also, please do not redistribute pictures, because even though it is illegal as stated on the front page, these pictures are of my friends and even though I like these pictures, I am not sure they will. Also it would be creepy to find your pic on a random website, so don't do it.

Christmas Excitement

I never used to be the person excited for Christmas, not even as lots of free stuff day, Normally, I thought people got too excited, that it was over commercialized, that it lost the true meaning. But now that I no longer live at home with my family, I think differently. I am becoming excited going home to be with my family, to exchange tokens of our love for one another and celebrate my family. I am enjoying trying to find gifts for people that they will love, where normally, it seems like a chore.(But it might also be my new printer, an early Christmas present that has greatly simplified the creation of photos as gifts) People like looking at themselves, recalling memories and such, and it is a fairly easy but thoughtful present to give people photos you have taken over the year of them and their friends. Also now that I have a printer of my own, I can experiment with printing on non-canon(as in the definition, not the company) papers, such as ones that have already been printed on, ones with ink or pencil lines underneath and different colored paper to print photos on.(which has really been the driving force for me wanting one anyway, that and the fact that it takes 30 min to get one printed on campus) Also I spent all today, where I should have been studying for my finals setting up my computer for Christmas. I think it is awesome. A wallpaper from DP Studios on Deviantart that I darkened a bit, some mixed icons also from Deviantart and a script for Samurize as a countdown until the day. (But i wanted to learn how to use Samurize anyway and the countdown will be useful for upcoming assignments and stuff later)

Also, I will also be glad to have this semester over with, as the combined pressure of art and programming and the creative writing class has been crushing my spirit. And while I am going to be taking 5 hours less of classes next semester, i also have signed up for some 300 level classes in addition to the basic web class and writing for the web. Also I should get filling out that paperwork for the 2nd major before I run out of credits by taking too many humanities classes.

Writing at 2 am in the dark bedroom where my roommates are trying to sleep us not helping this blog any, is it?

Why You Should Care about Space Debris. (9 of 9)

Satellites are now vital to many aspects of scientific and technological exploration, along with the communicative and societal aspects, which is a far cry from the first satellite launch 45 years ago. But in addition to the expansion of satellites, there has also been an explosion in the amount of space debris, the creation of possibly hundreds of millions of pieces of human trash orbiting the Earth and putting those satellites and human space exploration at great risk because of the vast destructive nature of space collisions. This is a purely human-caused problem, but the people and counties that should be addressing and forming ways to alleviate it, do not and are not presently enough. They are, instead, pursuing courses that will only intensify the problem, and they do so because of the fact that many are not even aware of the fact of space debris, and fewer still are aware and are concerned about the ramifications of the sheer amount of garbage orbiting the Earth. But space debris exists and it is an issue that needs to be solved soon, before human civilization goes down a path that leads to the ruin of the future use of Earth’s orbits.

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I posted this on the internet not to show off on what a good job I did, but to be able to fulfill this essay's purpose, to convince people that they should be aware of space debris.