drawing

Last Wednesday I registered for a drawing class. A drawing class, you say? Yes. I need to learn composition -- visual, artistic composition. I'm having a difficult time learning it within photography, where I need it, as I'm constantly distracted by the technical aspects I enjoy so much.

I've always wanted to really learn how to draw. I studied it when I had art in Junior High, but that was a rather long time ago, and I can't remember hardly anything.

So I found this lovely class through my local community college's continuing education program. I ended up emailing the teacher, making sure composition would be covered; she said that it will be an important part of the class. It meets once a week for four weeks, and starts in just about three weeks. I'm really looking forward to it.

After breakfast at Jim's, Ryan and I took the Vette to Livermore to get my supplies. We had a blast.

Ryan decided to join me in the class and enrolled tonight. Excellent!

A nice relaxing evening

These days, it takes both my brother and I being sick to spend a quiet evening home together. A bad way for a good thing to happen, but a good thing nonetheless.

We have stayed at home this evening, listening to new music.

A bunch of cool new albums were released recently: United Abominations by Megadeth, The Physics of Fire by Becoming the Archetype, and Minutes to Midnight by Linkin Park. In my Amazon order, I added one back catalog item: One by Neal Morse.

We started out with the new Megadeth album, and have moved on to the new BtA album.

I've long appreciated Megadeth, but I've really enjoyed their last two albums. This new one is excellent. Dave Mustaine's lyrics just get more and more interesting. I'm absolutely fascinated by his self-expression in his art as he matures in his faith. He's a tremendously talented musician.

I discovered Becoming the Archetype about a year ago. I heard a track of theirs in a Tooth and Nail compilation sampler released on Pure Volume. It was love at first listen. I immediately bought three copies: two to give away and one for my brother and I. My brother has been eagerly anticipating this release; I'm glad it finally arrived. It's very good.

(Note to the RIAA: See, giving away music sells more music. I'd've never heard this band any other way. And I've bought four copies of their album and given two away to others who would have never otherwise heard the band.)

We're just starting One now. It's typical Neal Morse brilliance so far. I've so enjoyed Question Mark, Sola Scriptura, and Testimony that I was curious to hear One.

I just realized that Neal and Dave's stories are somewhat similar: both achieved great success in the mainstream music world, became Christians, and kept doing what they love: using their incredible talents, only in a slightly different way. Neal went solo with a tremendous band, including Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater on drums.

Dave continued with Megadeth, and has had continued success. It seems the new album is very well received, including by die-hard Megadeth fans. That's so cool.

I fell in love with Linkin Park a while back when I had an ultra-cheap subscription to Yahoo Music Unlimited that included putting music on portables. I downloaded all three of LP's albums at the time, and fell in love with them. When YMU went mega-expensive for a portable subscription, I said to heck with them, unsubscribed, and deleted all of my MS-encrypted music. And I bought my favorites in iTunes or CD; three albums of which were LP's. And I haven't looked back. I've read very mixed reviews about this album, and am looking forward to hearing it.

While I'm writing about music, I must mention another of my favorite bands of recent times: Over the Rhine. I love them so much. They make beautiful music. I found out about them on a music podcast, The Bored-Again Christian. I noticed a song by them on one of my favorite TV shows, Bones -- the song and the scene almost brought me to tears; it was on my DVR until I had it on DVD -- and I sought them out with a passion. Thankfully, they had a bunch of free music on their web site. I listened and listened, and fell ever deeper in love. I bought a whole slew of albums last Christmastime: 7 albums, almost have their back catalog. And I fell ever deeper in love over the year, as I slowly digested all that new music.

This past Christmastime I bought the most of the rest of their back catalog; my collection is almost complete, and I buy every new album as it's released. Of course, I'm enjoying working through this second flood of beautiful music. I'm truly in love with this band.

Did I mention that I love music? It's truly one of God's best gifts to us.

Presence and availability

My friend Kim recently wrote on her Twitter feed:

who needs a mobile phone anyway? why be CONSTANTLY available? darn new-fangled devices only cause trouble... (new one arrives wednesday)

In a way, I sympathize. I've got too many darn newfangled devices myself, and they just keep getting more complicated, and some (notably my phone) less reliable as well.

My phone is a PDA with a usable web browser (Opera). It also has the best personal to do app I've seen.

I still have my Palm T5, which keeps my schedule and a bunch of reference information: Bibles, a nice dictionary, grocery list, world clock, etc. I just can't part with it yet.

As to why should we be constantly available? We don't. I don't really turn my phone off anymore, but I do regularly put it on do not ring. That way, I know when I miss calls.

Cell phones can be terribly convenient, but they don't always need to be answered; caller ID is helpful here as well. Voice mail has been accepted by almost all callers. My policy: answer calls when it's convenient, and return missed calls and voice mails as soon as it's convenient. I sometimes follow up missed calls and voice mails with emails or text messages, which since they're not real-time media, lowers the urgency of a conversation.

That's my two cents.

PageFour for free today

I am a huge fan of the site OutlinerSoftware. Not only do they (we? I post occasionally) cover outliners, they cover all manner of personal information management (PIM) software, and get into writing software as well. One of the best recommended non-academic writing software applications has been PageFour. I downloaded it a few days ago to start evaluating it. And what do I find this morning on OutlinerSoftware? It's the Giveaway Of The Day! So now I can evaluate the complete application. Nice.

What did I mean by non-academic writing? Academic writing requires tracking your references; the best app for that (According to OutlinerSoftware concensus) is IdeaMason and IdeaMason is incredibly cool.

Oh, and if you're writing on a Mac, they say Scrivener is unparalleled. I wish I could use it.

Unrelated PS: Jaiku was down last night; my feeds weren't being updated. It seems all is well now.

Jaiku and Twitter

Twitter is a pretty cool creation. It's like a microblog: a blog where entries can be a max of 14 characters long. Perfect for making entries via SMS, which I do every once in a while. Okay, a few times a day to this point.

I've heard Twitter described as a presence stream or an away message on steroids. I like it; it's like a running public diary of what I'm doing at any time. It's especially nice since it can be updated from either the web or my phone.

Jaiku is similar, but even bigger. It can be a presence stream, and it can be more. You can point your Jaiku account to all of your RSS feeds and it'll aggregate them for you. That's how I'm using it.

Jaiku is currently aggregating my Twitter page, my Blogger blog, my Flickr page, and my Vox blog (which is mostly dead right now).

A cool print service

Moo.com will print your Flickr images on 100x100 mm note cards and smaller 28x70 mm note cards for not too much money. My friend Esin uses them as personal cards (like business cards) and recommended them to me. I'll be getting an order together soon.

Cool stuff!