ok, i had a bunch of other stuff i needed to get done so i had to take a drawing break, but that’s all taken care of so now i can get back to my illustration projects.

next up i am going to re-work this mecha reindeer (minus the red nose).

i’ll post the finished product sometime soon. i think after i’m done this one i will revisit some of my fancy lady sketches. i also aim to combine these mecha illustrations with some of my other illustrations and put together a portfolio and maybe get some freelance illustration gigs.

we’ll see!

UPDATE: new reindeer illustration is done

click for full size

i subscribe to a usability mailing list from gerry mcgovern called “new thinking” which tends to have a lot of great insights into user-centric web design and management. the article i read today had a line which i’ve heard variations of before:

THE REAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOOGLE AND YAHOO

Yahoo’s customer is the advertiser. Google’s customer is you and
me. That’s why Google has been more successful.

gerry defends this position by saying that google’s advertising model focuses on relevance and usefulness, as opposed to yahoo’s approach, which he describes as focusing on “increasing page views and ad placements”.

i don’t think i agree with this. make no mistake about it, you and i are no more google’s customer than we are yahoo’s. google’s customers are, and always have been, the advertiser. it just happens that google offers a better product to their advertisers – by delivering focused, relevant, and targeted ads to the end-user, they are delivering a consumer who is more likely to act upon that advertisement. they are making that ad more likely to be worth the money that was paid for it.

google’s approach has a side-effect of making advertising more useful (as “useful” as advertising can be) to the end-user, to “you and me”. it’s not out of the goodness of their hearts though, it’s just a smart way of delivering a good product (you and me) to their customers (the advertisers).

just about every HTML competency test i’ve ever taken includes the question: “which of these will open a link in a new window”.

one of the answers will of course be the correct one:

target=”_blank”

but invariably one of the “incorrect” answers will be

target=”new”

and i just have to point out: if there isn’t already a window open with the name “new” (which more than likely there will NOT be) – that “incorrect” answer will also open a new window.

the question is never phrased as “which is best” or “which is correct”, but always “which of these will work”, implying that there is only one correct answer and the other options will not ever be valid, and that’s just wrong.

so, HTML test designers, stop making ambiguous questions, you jerks.

i was having some trouble upgrading my coppermine gallery, so i decided to screw it and use nextgen gallery as my image gallery. it’s good because it’s directly integrated with wordpress, and it was pretty easy to hack the search function so that the wordpress search will pull image results too.

here’s a hint: try searching for “shooting”, “sword” or “mecha”. you won’t be disappointed.

• new and improved sketchbook galleries

so zarkill.com recently fell victim to a hack that inserts linkspam into the template. i had been running an old installation and didn’t do many of the recommended steps to secure the software so i was like “oops my bad, i’ll go ahead and upgrade”. (thanks for the tip from brendan, a friendly stranger.)

so i did, and figured that was the end of it, but then BAM! the next day, there was more linkspam in the template. so i was like WTF, and started looking for some answers.

there are a lot of general guides to protecting your wordpress installation, but there was nothing specific about “wpfooterz” which appeared in the code comments before my particular linkspam. i saw a few people asking about it on forums, but no one had any real answers except “google it”, which just made me go “what do you think i’m doing, you dick”.

but i did find a few articles which suggested some things to look for – for instance, malicious code can be inserted into your theme that can make the linkspam come back even after you delete it all. so i started downloading my theme files so i could run a text search on them. lo and behold, before i was even finished downloading, my symantec antivirus actually flagged one of the files as a “hacking tool” – so i figured that must be the problem.

the file was called “locals.php” which must have been inserted into my theme folder during the time i was running an unsecure old installation. it is not a legit theme file. but since upgrading wordpress doesn’t overwrite themes, it survived the update and continued to re-insert the linkspam into my template.

i removed this file and HOPEFULLY that will take care of the problem. i hope this public service announcement will help anyone else who keeps getting the “wpfooterz” linkspam, because i couldn’t find any other specific info about it.

look for the locals.php file, which is full of malicious code, and get rid of it. then make sure you’ve got the most up-to-date version of wordpress and i guess it never hurts to go ahead and change your admin password. also i’ve learned that it’s a good idea to have an admin username other than “admin”, and make sure your wordpress tables have a prefix other than “wp_”.

hope that helps someone.

i’ve added another gallery to my sketchbook archive – this one is a large-format drawing pad that’s mostly from 1992 with some drawings from 1993. there are two exceptions – a horrible early attempt at an anime-style girl that is probably from 1990 or 1991, and the “unbreakable comb” drawing which is dated 1994.

this gallery also includes some watercolors and pastels.

as with other large items, because these pages are bigger than my scanner, some of the drawings are cropped. as i’ve said before, i’m ok with this for two reasons:

1. who do i think i’m talking to? who is going to care? no one, that’s who
2. i tried to crop the pages so i would lose as little as possible, so it’s fine

view the sketchbook gallery

so i was looking through my archives for an original sketch that i could use for my next full-scale illustration and i realized an entire sketchbook was missing.

somehow i missed the one called “property of no one“, from 1996. looking through it, i can see that it’s probably because there’s a lot of text i wanted to redact – it’s so full of emo bullshit it’s almost insufferable – i probably planned on getting rid of that embarrassing evidence but then forgot and never got around to it.

well, i’ve gone through and edited out most the shameful displays (leaving just enough to be interesting since it seems 1996 was a very sour year for me and i wouldn’t want to lose ALL of it) and posted it to the archive.

it’s got some good mechanoid sketches in it, and i think i’ll go with this mecha reindeer for my next project.

i’m also going to get back to the task of scanning my remaining artwork, and i actually have gotten almost everything populated with keywords which makes the archive more searchable.

yay hooray

i completed another illustration based on a re-working of this sketch from 1995.

the only thing i’m not completely sure of here is the coloring and shading on her face. :/

i might tweak that a little.

UPDATE – i adjusted the lighting and color of her face and i like it much better. woo!

click for full size

so it’s been over a year since i’ve updated, but the other day i was like “oh man i never draw anymore” so i busted out an old sketch and said “OK I AM MAKING THIS INTO SOMETHING FINISHED”

and so this dragon was born.

(click for full size)

i’m pleased with it and i hope to bring more of my old sketches (and hopefully some new ones as well) to a finished product. i’m really hoping that i can parlay this into some freelance illustration jobs, so if you want me to draw you pictures, let me know.

Before I set out for the day, I gave my friends a call to see if they were home. I had to walk past their house anyway, so if they were around I figured I’d stop in and say hi.

There was no answer. “Oh well, not home, I guess.”

I finished gathering my belongings and headed out my door.

My neighborhood was located on the side of a rather large hill, and the mile or so walk down to the subway was a daily ritual. At the bottom of the hill was a triple-decker duplex, where my friends lived on the third floor. This is why I call before “dropping by”: I don’t feel like running up three flights of stairs if no one is home. Something caught my eye, though… their orange tabby cat, roaming around up on their back porch. She wasn’t supposed to be outside like that, and certainly not if no one was home.

“Oh, I know what happened,” I mused. “They have that new roommate. He probably left the kitchen window open, and the cat climbed out onto the balcony.”

Not only was it a completely plausible scenario, but it had actually happened once before. They told the new guy not to leave the window open, but I guess it takes a while to get used to the rules of a new household.

So I took a detour from my trek to the subway, and ran up their back steps. The door from their balcony to the rear stairwell was never locked, so I figured I would just go up, put the cat back in the kitchen window, and shut it from the outside.

I stepped out onto their porch and scooped up the cat. My suspicions were correct: the kitchen window was wide open. I stroked the kitty on the head and then deposited her back inside the house. While I was at the window, I could see back through the house, down the hall, and into the living room. A figure caught my eye; it was obviously the new roommate. “Hey, man!” I called out. I’d just let him know that my friends don’t want the cat to be outside on the patio. A friendly reminder, no big deal. The figure disappeared to the side, out of my view. Didn’t hear me, I guess. I walked over to the top of the stairs and knocked on the back door.

After a minute or two of waiting, there was no reply. I went back out onto the balcony and peered through the open kitchen window. “Hello?” I called, looking for the person who had been in there moments ago. I saw no one. What I did see were boxes, piled up in the kitchen. Boxes containing the house’s supply of stereos, VCRs, DVD players…

My friends were being robbed.
Right now.

I kept watching inside the house, shifting my gaze from the boxes in front of me to the hallway and living room. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions just yet. There might have been another explanation, right? That might have actually been the new roommate I saw stride across the living room, right? I called out through the window again, “Hello? Anyone there?”

Then something jogged my memory… the downstairs neighbors had been robbed a few weeks ago. If the house was seen as an easy target, it would certainly get hit again.

I weighed some possible scenarios: if the house was being robbed, and the person I saw was the robber, they may have slipped out the front door while I was knocking on the back. Or, they may be laying low, waiting for me to leave. Waiting so they can get the rest of this stuff out of the house. Or, there’s the distant chance that there’s still an innocent explanation to all this. Maybe my friends were moving stuff around, or packing up some things for storage. I didn’t have a cell phone, so I couldn’t call them, or the police… maybe I should just go.

“But if I leave”, I thought to myself, “my friends might lose the rest of their stuff, and I could have stopped it.”

So I made what is arguably the worst decision I’ve ever made: I climbed in the kitchen window.

Once inside, I took another quick look at the boxes of valuables stacked haphazardly around the room, then made a beeline for the kitchen’s cordless phone. I didn’t know offhand where two of my three friends were, but I knew the third was at work.

I called her store and got her on the line.

“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me. I’m at your house right now… did you guys pack up a bunch of electronics and stuff in your kitchen?”
“Uh… no.”
“I think you should come home right now. I think your house is being robbed.”

A short explanation of the details followed. Then I asked her: “Before you come home, stay on the line with me. I’m going to make sure no one is still in here.”

This was not a task I was about to undertake unarmed. The two available options for weaponry were a field hockey stick and a butcher knife. At first I thought I might be more comfortable with the blunt object. If I did actually have to fight with someone, I didn’t really want to kill them. Besides, if a hockey stick was turned against me in a struggle, I’d be less likely to be killed by my own weapon. But then I considered the nature of the house; any confrontation would be in close-quarters, and there would be no room to swing a hockey stick effectively. Such a thing would be useless – a hindrance; I’d be better off with my bare hands. I grabbed the knife.

And so, blade in hand, I began my room-by-room sweep of their house. With my friend on the phone in constant contact, I checked each bedroom, each closet, each bed, and every other hiding place I could think of. I made my way from one side of the house to the other, not really knowing what I would do if I found someone. Would they see the knife and surrender? What would I do then? Hold them at knife-point until the cops came? Maybe I’d be better off just telling them to get out and letting them go. Would there be a fight? If someone jumped me, would I be able to repel them and cut them? What if they were also armed? What if they had a gun?

Fortunately for me, the layout of the house made my search a little less harrowing. I could get a good look into each room before getting too close, so it was unlikely I’d be surprised by someone hiding. Soon I had cleared all the rooms but one. The last bedroom was an offshoot from the living room, and this was the place I was most apprehensive about checking. Unlike the rest of the rooms in the house, this one was situated at a horrible angle. I could not see into the room without entering it. I was going in blind.

I pushed the door a little with the knife, to see if there was any reaction from within. I didn’t hear anything, so I crouched and peeked around the door jamb. It looked OK so far, so I slowly crept in and checked the bed and the closet.

The room was empty. The house was empty. The mystery man I had seen must have bailed out the front door as soon as I arrived.

My friend, relieved that I had made it through the house without getting killed, got off the phone and headed home right away. When she got there, she called the police and we took stock of everything that was missing. The perpetrators must have made a few trips out of the house before I’d gotten there, because there was a lot of stuff unaccounted for; not even in the boxes in the kitchen.

In the end, the landlord was found at fault for not securing the building after the previous robbery. My friends got a few months rent for free, the house was subject to extensive repairs for security, and I got a story that to this day makes my wife want to punch me in the face for rushing in like a fool.