In the meantime, while waiting for Christmas (always a kid) I bought a new drawing tablet for my computer, because my old one was starting to skip.  Then I found a cool painting program called ArtRage that simulates real paint (well as close as you can get, with a computer anyway)

Here’s one of my humble attempts in the digital method – sorry FaceBookers – don’t know how this will show up there, you might have to click away from Facebook for a moment… (oh no! … Gasp! what if I can’t get back? AaaRGGH! what should I do? click on the view original post thing in Facebook)

Amy on the Rocks

So this is my digital painting.  If you click on the picture, you should get a bigger version.  (I think – I upgraded this blog software a while ago, and everything doesn’t work how I want it to just yet.  Another days project I guess.

In the coming days and/or weeks I hope to add some real paint stuff here too.

And for all you FaceBookers, here’s a link back to the farm. Yes, I’m poking a bit of fun at you.  Probably ’cause I just don’t get it – guess I’m just not quite into the 21s t century yet.

Like going through all of my digital photos and arranging them in folders by year, month, date, camera model, original and re-touched. Obsessive. Compulsive.

I’m straying from the subject from this post, though.

Determined as I am to get a few drawings to resemble anime – manga I have one to post here of my granddaughter, Natasha. It’s not completely original, I admit, ’cause it’s a manga – nized version of a photo taken at Christmas time last year. But I’m still learning the basics, so I get to cheat a little bit.

It only took one compulsive all nighter to get my first anime drawing,  Not bad at all.

Manga, literally translated, means “whimsical pictures”. The word first came into common usage in the late 18th century. (from Wikipedia) Most people think of manga as comic books drawn in the Japanese style. The fact is, they pictures are usually whimsical, even when they depict something as gory as decapitation – a subject that could well be the theme of a manga illustration.

Of course, being somewhat compulsive and obsessive, once a thought strikes me, it consumes me. My life will not have any meaning until I have completed at least one picture.

And it’s a lot harder than it looks.

I don’t want to just “copy” a picture. I want to make one of my own. My first idea was to draw it on the computer. That didn’t turn out so well. The lines were too jerky, and it just didn’t feel like drawing. Then I decided to use pencil and paper. Too many eraser marks and smudges, probably because I don’t know what I’m doing, and because I haven’t done that type of thing for some time. I scanned a couple of pencil drawings and tried touching them up on the computer. That didn’t work as well as I hoped.

So, I sent my feeble attempts to my son (ain’t the internet wonderful?) to ask his opinion and advice.

He pointed out a few areas that might help me out. He suggested I should work work on the eyes and shape of the head, the facial expressions, nose, mouth, body, legs, arms and hands. The hair was a little out, and the clothes weren’t quite right, and I should really consider attaching feet to the legs. And, last but not least, the boobs on the girl were too small.

I realized from this critique, that I was actually pretty close to having it perfect.

So, after deleting all of the old files and shredding all of the paper, I managed to come up with this:

This attempt was drawn from scratch using the computer, and my trusty old Wacom drawing tablet. I’m not a big Photoshop user, so I used the Gimp as the drawing program.

And yes, I know theres no boobs, arms, legs, body, hands, feet or clothes. I’ll get to them eventually.

When they asked me if I wanted to have someone come and install it, or save the $25.00 and do a “self-install” I figured that I know enough about computers that it should be an easy task.

They assured me that all I had to do was unplug the old one, and plug the new one in. I’m not stupid. Nothing is that easy.

My old modem has been around for about eight years or so. It worked just fine, and I really didn’t see the need to upgrade. As well, I had a working wireless network running, the firewall all set up, and all of the computers connected properly and sharing files and printers the way they were supposed to.

But, it was new and shiny, with lots of blinking lights, and I couldn’t resist.

I opened the box, and looked at all of the instruction manuals (actually, I didn’t open them up, just noted that they were included in the box). There were a whole bunch of other gadgets and connectors and I put them in a separate pile. I didn’t know what they were, or why they would be needed. The manuals probably have information on that.

Now here’s the thing. When my internet connection was first installed by SaskTel, they had to install a separate phone jack for the internet connection, and some sort of controller gizmo in the basement. I knew this was going to give me grief. The new router didn’t need this stuff. All I had to do was plug it into the telephone jack – and it was supposed to work.

Wrong.

The telephone jacks had been wired specifically for phone only, or internet only. The new thing-a-ma-jiggy wanted both. So when I plugged the machine in, it told me that there was not an existing phone connection, or not an existing broadband connection, depending on which jack I used.

So, I crawled under the desk, and re-wired the jacks so that they were both internet and telephone ready. I plugged the new thing-a-ma-jiggy in, and it said that there was too much noise on the line. It suggested I install a filter on each phone line in the house.

Uh-huh.

Back to the pile of extra stuff. Some of them were labeled “filter” so it was obvious what I needed to do. I decided I didn’t really need to filter all of the phone lines, just the one I was hooking the modem to.

The thing-a-ma-jiggy strongly disagreed with that, and told me to connect the filters to all of the phones before it would even consider trying to connect to the internet. When I was done that, I could click “Try Again” to establish a connection.

It’s amazing how well a person can take orders from a machine. I obediently connected all of the filters (except one, ’cause no machine is gonna tell me what to do) and clicked “Try Again”

A registration page popped up on the computer, and I filled in all of the blanks and hit “Okay” Not Okay. I was not a registered user. I was to call the help desk for assistance.

But the internet was working, so I decided I could do that anytime, if ever, and continued on. I needed to change the configuration of the computers on my network to recognize the new router and set about doing that.

In about a half hour, I had everything done, and all was well.

I had a cup of coffee, and decided it was time to check my email.

“Cannot establish a connection with your email service. Please make sure all cables are connected properly and you are not behind a firewall. Contact your system administrator for assistance”

None of the computers were connecting now. I checked the thing-a-ma-jiggy and it told me I was not a registered user, and to call the help desk again. Sure that it was something I could fix, I re-booted the computers, re-booted the router, and ran through the set up process again.

Everything stalled at the registration, where I was once more informed I was not a registered user and to call the help desk. I said “Okay” and clicked “next” like I did before, assuming all would be well.

This time I was told in no uncertain terms, that I could not set up the router until I registered, and that before I could continue, I needed to call the help desk for assistance.

I did that. The first thing they said was, “Why did you get a new modem. Did your other one quit working?”

“No, it was suggested by your people that I should upgrade”

“Hmm, we’ve never had too many problems with that old model. I wonder why they told you that. Here’s the problem though. You are not a registered user”

Biting my tongue, I replied, “Can I become a registered user”

“Yes. But we will have to reset everything, including your passwords. Then you will have to run through the set up procedures again on all of your computers”

“Let’s do it then”

“If you old modem and router is working, you can just return the new one if you want”

“I would, but I have already changed everything for the new one.”

“Did you connect filters to all of your phone lines? You will have trouble connecting if you didn’t do that”

“Yes,” I lied, knowing I deliberately left one line unfiltered.

“Okay, then. This will only take a moment. Uh-oh…”

Uh-oh. UH-OH!!!. That’s never good. “Uh-oh?” I asked.

“I’m going to put you on hold. Seems there is a minor technical difficulty”

A cigarette later, the help guy returned. “There we are. You should be able to continue with your installation now. You will have to unplug the modem, restart all of your computers, and go through the complete setup process”

Everything was working fine about an hour later.

Now, there’s a whole bunch of “tweaking” things to do to get it working like the old system, but I’ll save that for a rainy day.