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[personal profile] cybermathwitch
First, I'm a little confused.  I just upgraded back to a paid account (yay! squee!), and figured, as according to the site, that I'd have 30 userpic slots.  Cause that's what it says, right? 

How do I have 105?

I'm not complaining mind you - more pics = yay! - I'm just wondering how that happened (and if it's really true, and not a site glitch.)

On to more interesting developments:

I have a new journal.  Yes, *another* one.  But there's a good reason this time, really!  See, ever since I was old enough to draw, my mom taught me to sign my work with my initials.  So I've always signed any artwork I've done "klm".  I made a big chunk of icons and a couple wallpapers of BSG last night for [profile] bsg_challenge, and when I was saving them it occured to me I didn't have a way of translating that over into the digital world.  (Also, in purely practical thoughts, I needed a place to upload the images and didn't want to make this account a sponsored account.  I didn't realize I would be upgrading this morning.)  So I checked, and while "klm" by itself was taken, [profile] klm_art was not.  So there you have it.  There are 20 icons and 2 wallpapers, all from the Mini-Series.

Teasers (also, my new default icon - see above - is from this batch):



follow the fake cut (rules, credits, disclaimers, etc. are all within)

I meant to make one of Laura and one of Helo, but at 4am I pretty much collapsed.

The whole story:

Ok, my primary graphics software is MicroGrafx's Picture Publisher 8 (not the official site, as it was acquired by Corel ages ago) which is from, oh, 1998, 1999?  But it's a good, solid program with a LOT of flexibility and a fairly intuitive user interface.  (I tried *once* to navigate Photoshop and was thoroughly confused.  Or maybe it was Corel Draw?  One of the major programs, anyway.  And I'm very good at learning computer programs, usually.)  I was having a bit of difficulty one the "Out of Step" wallpaper, though.  Specifically, the text was flat out refusing to enlarge enough to be readable but not pixelated and chunky.  A few months ago I downloaded Serif's PhotoPlus 6 because they offer it for free on their site.  (They actually offer several "outdated" copies of their software for free download, 'tis tres cool.)  So I figured, what the hell, I'll see if it'll do the text art.  It pretty much did, though I still had some problems with the sizing. (I blame my original resolution on the images in retrospect.) 

I got it all put together, stumbled across an effect I really liked, and was laying it over a background to make it fit the standard 1024x768 measurements, when the program crashed on me.  Like an idiot I hadn't saved between applying the effects and laying the image onto a new base.  ::headdesk::  I went back and did the effects again (though I couldn't reproduce how I'd managed to copy the text layers the first time, so it's not as precise as it was before), saved the .jpg, and imported that into Picture Publisher 8 to add the background and the credit text at the bottom (since that was supposed to be small anyway.) 

Onto more icons.  Which were going swimmingly except for a couple bobbles on the anti-aliasing of the text effects (I think my program is on it's last leg, because it didn't used to have that problem) until I started getting "your computer doesn't have enough memory" warnings.  And not just warning pop-ups, but those really old Win 3.0 style warnings that mean that the computer can't even pull up it's own pretty pop-up boxes.  I don't think I'd ever actually seen an XP computer give those before.  PP8 locked up on me, with two icons in the process of being saved, omg, ::headdesk:: and wouldn't respond.

Here's where I'm clever.  Even at 3:30 in the morning.

I used the print screen key to capture the screen (including the two icons).  Then, as soon as I crashed out of PP8 and reloaded it, I pasted to a new image, used the cropping tool, and voila - icons.  ::whew::  ::loves her print screen key::  (The icons in question, btw were the base for "Pilot Sex!" and the completed "Nothin' but the rain".  I had to go back in and add effects and text to "Pilot Sex!" of course, but I think that "rain" turned out really well despite my hack.

I kinda wish the text on my "prayer" icon had come out better, though.  It's a bit blurry.

After all of that, I nearly cried when I tried to figure out how to upload and post everything to the journal and the comm.  I knew the theory behind doing it, and knew all the different steps, but I couldn't seem to get them to line up in my brain where I could actually do them.  I hadn't actually ever done a post that way before, and again, 3:30am and no sleep.  LJ's Scrapbook loves me though, and I didn't have to frak with trying to upload to Picasa's WebAlbums.

Finally, I found an article about the Japanese royal family - specifically a comparison of Crown Princess Masako and Princess Kiko and how they approach their duties and obligations.  Princess Kiko is about 8 months pregnant with her third child (she has two daughters) and everyone is waiting to see whether it's going to be a boy or a girl, because right now there's not actually an heir to the throne in that generation.  (Crown Princess Masako and Crown Prince Naruhito have one child, a 4-year-old girl name Aiko.  Currently though, Japanese law doesn't allow a woman to inhereit the throne.)
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July 2011

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