Cats: 0, toilet paper monster: 1; also, ArtRage and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro

Posted on March 18th, 2011 by Sacha Chua

One time when I came home, W- showed me the picture he took of a toilet paper trail going to the laundry basket. The cats refused to testify, but this is what I think happened.

W- says the other drawing I made of Neko(cat)’s favourite positions for sleeping might be too personal, it being set in our room and all. I said Cat versus Human does it. He said my blog isn’t Cat versus Human. Which is true, because Cat versus Human is awesome and even has a book coming out, but not inarguable. I didn’t break out the persuasive techniques we learned about in “Thank You for Arguing,” though. Instead, I’ll tease you with the captions:

The Pillow Hog
The Balancing Sphinx
The Chaperone
The Heat-seeker

People who know Neko (our oldest cat) or who have cats of their own can probably figure out the rest.

I’m playing around with Artrage Studio Pro to see if I like it. I think I get more value from it than from a new laptop battery. Putting my computer into hibernation mode before moving between the kitchen and the living room adds maybe a minute; not a big cost. Being able to draw with 16 million colours and infinite erasures – now that’s something real. It makes drawing a whole lot more fun. I might give the Autodesk SketchBook Pro trial another spin, too. It might be better for pencils and clean illustrations.

Drawing is a great way to remember, particularly for things I’ve forgotten to take photographs of or for which I’ve lost the files. My stack of blank index cards is dwindling fast, and sketches pile up on my bedside table. This is fun. =)

Quick comparison with SketchBook Pro:

Smoothing is more controllable in Artrage, and I should check out the flood fills in that program too. I do like the pen gestures in Sketchbook Pro, though, and I’m sure they’ll be a lot more convenient with experience. I’m going to practise drawing in both some more. Who knows? I may even get both, if it turns out that they exercise my brain in different ways. =)

More posts about: cat, drawing, family, life, sketches // Add Comment »

Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/22155

On This Day...

2013: Identifying my reactions to stress — One of the topics we discussed at last week’s Less Wrong Toronto meetup was the fight-or-flight response and reactions to [...]
2013: Hacking my way around networking — I like some events but not others. I like events with interesting presentations, particularly if they’re short; I take notes. [...]
2012: Taking up hobbies again: photography and gardening — The stereotype of an entrepreneur is someone who obsesses about business at all hours of the day. It’s good for [...]
2010: Welcome to IBM! Advice for other newcomers like me — One of my mentees wanted to know what books I’d recommend for someone new to the business world. I thought [...]
2009: Improving my talk management process — Now that I’m reasonably happy with managing my calendar with a combination of virtual assistance and tools like TimeBridge, I’d [...]
2007: Steadycam — Yesterday, Wayne helped Quinn build a steadycam for her film projects. They picked up some parts from the hardware store and [...]
2007: Tea party — I had my first tea party at 666 today. I really enjoyed having people over for tea and conversation! I served roiboos [...]
2007: Mmm… — Homemade shrimp dumplings with chili garlic sauce in wonton noodle soup – chicken broth with leafy vegetables, spring onions, and just [...]
2006: Visited a friend — One of my friends is in the hospital. Remembering how bad hospital food is, I brought him a couple of sandwiches [...]
2006: Upon reflection — A good day of work at IBM and some time to reflect have left me with a clearer perspective. I think [...]
2006: Skule Night — Bill invited me to Skule Night, a comic production that’s become a yearly tradition among engineering students. I thought it was hilarious, [...]
2006: End-of-class tango milonga on Monday — Announcement from Emily: This Monday is our end-of-class Milonga! Dress will be semi-formal — so here’s your chance to take a break [...]
2005: Tanaga: Siopao — My first tanaga. Please help me fix my Tagalog; I might’ve gotten some of the nuances wrong. The poem below is [...]
2005: Kodak Philippines: send pictures through the Net — http://www.kodakexpress.com.ph/ph/ In response to Michael Cheney’s search for a service that’ll let him upload photos and have them printed out by someone [...]
2004: Oooh, subvocalization — From Slashdot: alex_guy_CA writes “Yahoo News has a story about technology that comes close to reading thoughts not yet spoken, by analyzing [...]
2004: Executive board — EscaÃƒÂ±an, Ealden Esto (43) II BS MIS Lihan, Marc (40) II BS CS Gonzales, Vanessa (39) II BS CS Sta. Maria, Judd (36) III BS CS Rodriguez, Adrian [...]
2004: New Muse keyword: :osuffix — If you derive one file from another produced by Muse (ex: PDF from LaTeX from Muse), then use :suffix to specify [...]
2004: More thoughts about my research interest — I _would_ very much like a text-based interface that allowed me to easily navigate through all of the data in my [...]
2004: Howm — http://howm.sourceforge.jp/ Funky hyperlinking in all files. See if I can steal ideas from this…
2004: Summarization resources by Stephen Wan — http://www.ics.mq.edu.au/~swan/summarization/index.html
2004: CompSAt meeting — IT Forum - documentation of what happened - videos of all the sessions - point person for IT forum - hosting third national e-learning [...]
2003: twig is wonderful! — I’ll use twig for the webmail interface. We’re almost good to go!
2003: horde2 giving me trouble — I have no idea why the login refuses to do anything. It just sits there. Perhaps it’s because it’s trying to [...]
2003: consider PlannerMode to XML — Some thoughts have been added to the PlannerMode wikinode on parsing it as a tree, and transforming it to XML.
2003: rss feeds — I need to understand precisely what rss feeds are for, and why I should get around to publishing at least [...]
2003: ion window manager — Ion’s pretty okay, but you need to tweak the default configuration a bit. More info in the IonWindowManager node
2003: imap server correctly installed — but I’m having problems with horde2 – I can’t seem to log in…
2003: ack! misquoted! — The article written by Rizal Raoul Reyes in the 2003.03.18 issue of Today is okay, except for one factual error. My [...]
2003: emacs-wiki-edit-link-at-point — emacs-wiki-edit-link-at-point works again. It can be found in ../emacs/emacs-wiki-config.el
2003: remind.el — zeDek from #emacs needs info on PlannerAndRemind, so I guess it’s time to make a wikinode about it.
2003: songs — Started putting together a SongLyrics wiki node for the songs I like singing.
2003: imapd howto — http://www.wienand.org/files/debian_imap.html also looks useful.
2003: imapd howto — http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Postfix-Cyrus-Web-cyradm-HOWTO/ looks useful. Unfortunately, my aunt wants to get on the Internet so that she can chat, so I can’t [...]
2003: uw-imapd and horde — I’m still getting Notice: Certificate failure for localhost: self signed certificate: /C=PH/ST=Metro Manila/L=Makati/O=Adphoto, Inc./CN=192.168.1.41/Email=sacha@localhost (errflg=2) in Unknown on line 0 – [...]
2003: Evolution of an Emacs user — reflection, linux — Like almost all newbies, I started out with pico, the editor that comes with pine. pico was friendly. pico was easy [...]
2003: emacswiki:SachaChua — Someone updated my wiki page! Yay. People actually care about getting to my website. I really should check the access [...]

sacha chua living an awesome life