This is scary. North Carolina, the state I live in, just eliminated extended unemployment, and slashed short term weekly benefits by almost half. Without the safety net of extended unemployment, my family would have had exactly 0 income last year when my brother was laid off and we were both job searching. I'm vigorously searching for a second job now to try to make ends meet, as is almost everyone else I work with, but it's about to become a whole lot harder to find the sort of jobs society thinks I'm qualified for, and even harder to find any sort of security. I have the option of taking on debt and trying to go to college, but there's still no guarantee that I could find a job. All of my friends who have been through college have had to take minimum wage jobs outside of their fields, and are still unable to pay their loans back, so this supposed "option" is not appealing to me. I just don't know how to climb out of this poverty I've been born into. It's not just me, either. This seems to be the theme song of my generation. All I can do is keep submitting my application, and keep hoping.

My birthday adventure- part one - the boring part.

I turned 24 this year on February 24th. At first it was a quiet affair, as all of my birthdays so far had been.

The night before, mom and my sister Becca gave me my gifts, and what wonderful gifts! Two pads of watercolor paper, and a foot spa! So cool! I was happy, and very grateful, but it turns out this was just a distraction.

So I woke up on the morning of the 24th, thinking my birthday was done with, and of course immediately tore my cornea. I have recurrent erosions, and every now and then I wake up to blinding pain in my right eye, just for opening my eye too quick.

In pain, I stumbled out of bed, fumbling for my eye drops to 'oil can' my eye the rest of the way open. After several minutes of meditation the pain becomes bearable, so I continue about the rest of my morning. I eat a little something, then get dressed for work. It's a Sunday, which means a matinee. The show of the week was The Music Man by The Gallery Players. I had designed their lights, and was now running their sound for the shows. I was enjoying the show, so I didn't mind I had to work on my birthday.

When I arrive at work, my director has the entire cast and crew sing to me. Let me tell you, it's a very awesome moment when 30+ actors who can seriously sing sings happy birthday just for you, but I was glad I was all the way upstairs in the booth, so I didn't have to stand awkwardly while they sang. Instead, I sat awkwardly, smiled, waved, and thanked them, before continuing with mic check.

For the music man, I was fortunate enough to have my best friend Heather in the booth with me, running lights. We have so much fun during the shows, joking, laughing, hanging out, and never ever missing a cue. We spent most of that matinee talking about Pokemon, and various crazy aunts and uncles, so it was a lot of fun.

After the show, mom shows up with cupcakes for me and the cast, woo! So cool!
One of the producers said they hoped I really enjoyed the rest of my birthday, and gave me a mysterious foreshadowing smile. I thought very little of it at the time, and thanked them and told them of my plans of a low-key evening playing video games or watching a movie.

Little did I know what awaited me at home...

To be continued...

GEEK, OUT!

'Paper'- thin, but I like it.

Ok, so quick review on my so far most used drawing app- Paper by 53.

First, the cons.
No zoom, no tool control, no layers, limited pallete, and the extra drawing utensils are WAY overpriced. Also took me forever to realize how to use the undo/redo function. Which isn't a button like most apps, but designed to where you have to put two fingers on the screen and draw a counter clockwise circle to undo, clockwise to redo.

Now the pros
Light weight, I like it for capturing quick messy impressions of things. When I don't want to be bogged down by menus, or not wanting to produce something polished, this is the app I use.
I really really love how you can create journals in the app, with as many pages as you like, and customizing the fronts of the journals. I often entertain myself just by flipping through the pages quickly.
Because of it's simplistic nature, it's great for someone who is just starting to get into digital art. Also because of it's simplicity, I've drawn more in it than in my deeper art apps.
The app itself runs quickly and smoothly, again great for capturing quick impressions of things.
As far as the tools go- I do really wish there were a resize function, but sadly there is not. I like the paintbrush tool, which has dynamics similar to a watercolor brush in Painter.

Conclusion
If you're looking for an app to produced polished works, this is probably not the one for you.
But if you're looking for a quick sketch, doodle, or visual journal app you'll enjoy Paper by 53.

If you're looking for a more indepth art app, though, I would recommend Procreate for painting, and Sketchbook pro for drawing. I will do reviews on them soon.

Also coming soon, I geek out about my brand new ipad, and all of the great use I'm getting out of it, as well as the adventure that led me to get it.

But for now,
GEEK, OUT!