2012 Christmas Greeting

Here's my offering for this year's Christmas season.  (Late again)

-- Marge

The sky is falling! Uhm, was falling...

Now that we've survived the doomsday prediction (Mayan calendar reaches its end, world doesn't follow suit), we can relax and have a laugh about all the brouhaha.  (However, if you're a true alarmist/doomsday theorist, you could say it's just late.)

Below are two doomsday prediction cartoons by Cam Cardow and two end-of-the-world ones by Wiley Miller (from CSL Cartoonstock).

***

***

***

***

***

I could finish with an interview of a Mayan elder who knows about Mayan calendars (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v67pxeizXo), but as any doomsday theorist knows: to accept a viewpoint that disagrees with your personal doomsday theory is against the rules of doomsday theories.

-- Marge

deviantArt, #Digital Landscape

DeviantART, "where ART meets application!", is a gathering place for some wonderfully talented artists.  As an example here's one of the pieces on the front page today.

"A Bed of Moss II" by Matthias-Haker:

One of the areas of digital artwork that continually draws my attention is digital landscapes.  I think that's one reason why I play games like Entropia Universe and World of Warcraft -- to see the landscapes.  (Okay, okay, they're fun too.)  DeviantART has a digital landscape group that accepts new members.  Please note that there are rules for submission.  Here's a sample rendered 3D landscape, titled "Coming Home" and by ~tophoo-de:

Here are two videos showing the landscapes and skyscapes of World of Warcraft (WoW), uploaded by Hubwood:

Not to be forgotten is the work of Ryan Bliss at Digital Blasphemy.  He offers free wallpapers, as well as paid memberships.  Here's a thumbnail of a free wallpaper for "Canopy Creek (Autumn) (2009):

BTW, there's an article at the WoW site, titled "ImagineFX Gets Exclusive with the Blizzard’s Fine Arts Project," that states

The December edition of ImagineFX magazine is now on sale and packed with a little something extra for Blizzard art enthusiasts, including tutorials and how-to information from some of the artists that help bring World of Warcraft to life. You’ll also get to take a look into Blizzard Entertainment’s Fine Arts Project; a unique gathering of some of the world’s greatest contemporary fantasy artists creating their own visions of the Blizzard universe. Legends including Alex Ross, Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell, Craig Mullins, Alex Horley, Todd Lockwood, and Syd Mead share their experiences and showcase the incredible pieces of art they produced for the project.

-- Marge

All about Murphy's Law with cartoons, too

My home has been a working example of Murphy's Law lately, hence this post about it.

HowStuffWorks has an article by Josh Clark titled "How Murphy's Law Works."  Of note is that it's called Sod's Law in England.

There are sites dedicated to the subject.  The Complete Edition of Murphy's Laws gives an exhaustive glossary of the law, its corollaries and derivatives.  This one I experience on a regular basis:

O'Brian's Law
If you change lines, the one you just left will start to move faster than the one you are now in.

This cartoon is in Clay Bennett's archives:

An collection of cartoons by Diana Denny at The Saturday Evening Post contained this cartoon (all I know is it was published in the summer of 1971, can't read the cartoonist's signature):

And, lastly, here's a demotivational poster from quickmeme by rriverstone:

Have you noticed that social sites have started using the term karma?

-- Marge

Tools for holiday artwork

Starting with a look at the free holiday clip art that's available online, I found that the word for today is brushes.  Since I can't seem to find a site that defines what they are, here goes.

Digital art software comes in mostly two categories, vector (for line drawings) and raster (for working with bitmap images, like photos).  Brushes are usually associated with raster graphics programs; however, Gimp brushes can be in three forms: animation, raster and vector.  

Essentially a brush changes the shape, and possibly other attributes, of your cursor.  In a way a brush acts like a rubber stamp (some programs have a separate feature called rubber stamp). Most art software comes preloaded with a variety of brushes.  You can also download additional ones and/or make your own.  Most of the additional brushes available online are compatible with Photoshop.  Since Photoshop, an Adobe product, and PhotoPaint and Painter, Corel products, are both proprietary software, I'll be talking about Gimp brushes today.  Gimp can use Photoshop brushes and is open source -- version 2.8 is the latest and it's very good.

There's a very long, but good, tutorial on using brushes in Gimp on YouTube. In fact there are many Gimp tutorials on YouTube.

Below is a sampling of the brushes you can download and install for use in Gimp.

All-free-download vector brushes for non-commercial use (Exercise caution clicking at this site -- it's closely tied with Shutter Stock):  

***

***

Obsidian Dawn, byline "digital design resources":

***

***

Brushlovers, byline "amazing free Photoshop brushes":

***

***

If you're wondering about Gimp and Photoshop compatibility, here's an article from Chron, small business division.

Photoshop may be the industry standard for digital graphics, but I dislike working with it.  My preferred money-sink is Corel.  But seeing the video above on Gimp, I'm beginning to wonder about switching.

-- Marge

War on Christmas cartoons

Fox News would have us believe there's a war on Christmas.  It must be so because the reporters there have repeated it over and over (as they do many news items).  And some other reporters and cartoonists have run with the idea.  For example, Jon Stewart at "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central. (Sure miss Jon's point of view.)

Bearman (who may not have a first name)  at Bearman Cartoons posted this cartoon in 2011:

***

***

A cartoon by Jeff Koterba, dated 2011, is posted at Cagle Post --

***

***

Pat Bagley weighs in on the war on Christmas at The Week Magazine with this one:

***

***

And at TruthDig, "drilling beneath the headlines," I found one by Nick Anderson:

***

***

So, is there a war on Christmas?  Jeff Sorensen at the Huffington Post says "The War on Christmas Doesn't Exist."

-- Marge

Alien ancestors?

Visualize this -- Two planets collide and the debris ejected into space contains fragments that are rich with organic material.  The fragments themselves become meteorlike bodies that traverse space until they land on other planets.  Within a landing meteoroid is viable life substance that has been nurtured by radioactive heat source(s) and nutrients.

Voila!  New amino acids and nucleobases take root and possibly flourish far from their origin.

From the TIME article by Jeffrey Kluger, titled Aliens Among Us (you need a subscription to read the whole article):

Life, as far as we can prove, exists only on Earth. There is our modest planet circling our modest star, and then there is the unimaginable hugeness beyond. Yet in that whole, great cosmic sweep, we're the only little koi pond in which anything is stirring. That, at least, has been the limit of our science. But that limit is changing fast.

The cosmos, as scientists now know, is awash in the stuff of biology. Water molecules drift everywhere in interstellar space. Hydrogen, carbon, methane, amino acids--the entire organic-chemistry set--swirl through star systems and dust planets and moons. In 2009, NASA's Stardust mission found the amino acid glycine in the comet Wild 2. In 2003, radio telescopes spotted glycine in regions of star formation within the Milky Way. And meteors that landed on Earth have been found to contain amino acids, nucleobases--which help form DNA and RNA--and even sugars.

The study that looks at "the hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by meteoroids, asteroids and planetoids" is called panspermia.  There's an interesting site on the topic called Panspermia-Theory, "origin of life on Earth."  There's also a Panspermia.org, that states "Life comes from space because life comes from life."  Not sure about that, but it could be an interesting stop.

If you're scientifically inclined, be prepared to be fascinated by this video, uploaded by Gravitionalist:

-- Marge