Venia and System Status

Okay--now the new Venia's Travels is online. I finally finished about half an hour ago. I still had one page to colour at 5am when I finally went to bed, and figured I ought to do it when I was fully awake. I also wanted to be as awake as possible when I did my final pass over the chapter. I hope no-one minds the delay too much.

It's amazing how long just one day without a computer can seem. Which is not to say it was a lazy sort of day--I was constantly running around on Wednesday trying to get things done. I pencilled and inked a bit while Tim was here, but I didn't really have enough time at my desk to get much done. I ended up finishing with inking the last two pages yesterday. My iPod has acted as a sort of surrogate computer for me--I hooked it to my computer speakers and Tim and I were able to listen to some old Howard Stern Show recordings I had on there, including a particularly great one where Artie Lange wore one of Robin Quivers' old double D bras while guys tried to see how many potatoes they could fit in the cups. Unfortunately, hearing the Stern Show with Artie made the new shows pale in comparison, so last night I ended up just listening to an audiobook of Wuthering Heights while I coloured. Listening to Mr. Lockwood telling Heathcliff about Catherine's ghost in a storm outside at 3am while I was colouring at 3am during a storm had a nice effect.

It's been raining yet again for the past couple days, and without a computer running and my ceiling fan on low, I was actually able to hear the rain outside at night, which helped considerably to get me to sleep. It's not as great as hearing the ocean outside at night, though, as I did when I lived on the beach. Even in the exceptionally gloomy state of mind I was in those days, I still appreciated it. I lived without regular Internet access, too. I just had a computer with a 486 processor on which I'd play Warcraft II from time to time. Mostly in those days, when I wasn't at work, I was watching movies I got from video stores, which are disappearing now, too.

Now, of course, I have a computer with four 2.5 GHz processors. And two hard drives--I was really happy it was the old motherboard that had died. It really is an amazing coincidence that mine would die just as I happened to have a brand new one in a box that's several generations better.

I'm also using Windows 7 now. This is the first time since, I think, Windows 98 that I feel like Microsoft has substantially improved the interface. Having file manager/Windows explorer permanently locked to the task bar instead of various phantom organisation systems of quicklinks is by itself excellent. If nothing else, it'll be easier to explain to people where their files actually are when they download them.

Last night's tweets;

Metal stars scrape inside the space stomach.
The table by the fast kitchen's burning.
Atlas as bee sags through a wax hammock.
For hares at night there's no learning.