haha, “brewin’”. like “brew”. like “beer”. like “drunk”. like “drunk journal”

i am in the process of reviving several old projects. for instance, i will be redoing wishcandles, i will be redoing zarkill.com, and i will be making a new site for my wife’s etsy store.

i’m hoping to delve into HTML5 experimentation so as to stay ON THE CUTTIN EDGE. and that’s what i’m gonna do with zarkill.com here. also i want to try selling art, we’ll see how that works out!

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.