Mercurial

Been awhile since I updated; was just too lazy and short of anything really interesting to post until now.


It was my cousin's birthday on the 21st of June, and I decided to make her something instead of just taking the easy way out and buying her a gift. Since I hadn't done anything artsy for ages, I went with a picture; only this time I decided to use colour and do it on my computer, instead of pencil-in-sketchbook as per usual. The plan is to get the thing printed out professionally on glossy paper and put it in a nice frame. That stuff is pending, but over the past couple o' days I finished the picture in soft copy.

Here's a play-by-play:


I started with a few reference pictures like the one here. Generally, if I find one that is perfect for what I had in mind, I use that and recreate it as closely as I can manage. If I don't, I take a few different pictures and make a composite of them instead. In this case since I also had the real person handy, I did some running back and forth and staring at her and such. She randomly comes and stares at me all the time, so she had no excuse not to put up with it. Ignore the silly pouty-lip look, young girls like to do that for some incomprehensible reason.I started off with a tablet and mouse sketch of her in MS Paint. I zoomed far out and used the tablet to get a higher resolution look, and so that the lines were smoother. I zoomed in and used the mouse when precision was required. Contrary to popular belief, I find that the tablet is only good for sketching and rough lines; things which can also be done with a mouse. This means that I can in fact do all my drawings with only a mouse, but NOT with only a tablet. Her eyes are the only parts of the picture which have been coloured in at this stage; they were the main focus of what I had in mind and I wanted to be sure I could get the look right before I committed to finishing the rest of the picture.

I filled in the back and foreground using some rough sketching and the spraypaint tool. This requires a massive amount of effort to get right. I also touched-up her hair, as at this point I began to realize that it looked too glossy to fit with the scene. Note that I converted these pics to JPEG to upload here, and this greatly degraded the colour and resolution. The originals are still in bitmap form.

Using the same technique, but with much greater care and precision, I coloured her in and further touched up her hair.



Finally, I used Photoshop's Smudge on the foreground, moon, and stars to give them a water-coloured appearance, and Blur on the entire picture, giving the rest of it a pen, crayon, and colour-pencil appearance as well as reducing the pixellated look.
The insignia, title, signature, and year completed the piece.

I know the composition of the picture is a bit unusual-looking, and it's not that stellar a result, but considering it's a first effort I'm quite satisfied with my work.
Will take it to a photography store tomorrow.
Here's hoping she likes it; but she's real picky so I'm not getting my hopes up.

Those Who Fight Further

It is a well-known fact that the more desperately you have responsibilities to fulfill, the more distractions you suddenly find sprouting up everywhere around you.

All of a sudden you feel like you absolutely have to cut your fingernails, or examine that interesting spot on the wall, or watch the mold grow in your transparent water-bottle.

Anything, anything, but get back to work.

Which is what I'm doing here; despite having things happen to me which are quite worthy of talking about, there is never any time to actually talk about them except when I don't actually have time; if you can figure that one out.

I shall restrain myself. An interesting post or two will follow after the Paediatrics exam, which is, incidentally, in two days.

And that brings me to what I have to say.





THE END COMETH, BUT I SHALL GO DOWN KICKING AND SCREAMING.
BRING IT ON, KIDS. WHEN THE DUST SETTLES IT IS I WHO SHALL BE LEFT STANDING.

Piak-ing

- VoiD - YES I PASSED I PASSED TAKE THAT PLACENTAS MUAHAHAHA says (8:24 PM):

hey how long is your lease?

1 year?

~Shuenie~ says (8:26 PM):

yea

y ah?

- VoiD - YES I PASSED I PASSED TAKE THAT PLACENTAS MUAHAHAHA says(8:27 PM):

oh nothing just asking

~Shuenie~ says (8:27 PM):

lolz

y so random wan

- VoiD - YES I PASSED I PASSED TAKE THAT PLACENTAS
MUAHAHAHA says (8:28 PM):

nothing

do you like watermelons and purple dinosaurs?

- VoiD - YES I PASSED I PASSED TAKE THAT PLACENTAS
MUAHAHAHA says (8:29 PM):

my orange book is orange

there is no spoon.

~Shuenie~ says (8:31 PM):

hmm

- VoiD - YES I PASSED I PASSED TAKE THAT PLACENTAS
MUAHAHAHA says (8:31 PM):

indeed!

~Shuenie~ says (8:31 PM):

piak piak piak

- VoiD - YES I PASSED I PASSED TAKE THAT PLACENTAS
MUAHAHAHA says (8:31 PM):

LOL

*dodge dodge dodge*

~Shuenie~ says (8:31 PM):

there is only so much dodges u can achieve =p

- VoiD - YES I PASSED I PASSED TAKE THAT PLACENTAS
MUAHAHAHA says (8:34 PM):

there are only so many piaks you can dish out

~Shuenie~ says (8:38 PM):

u underestimate the power of a gal ;p

piak-ing is like our second nature

Mythbusters

My aunt forwarded this email to me today:

> What a world we live in........
> A few weeks ago in a movie theatre in Melbourne a person sat on
> something that was poking out of one of the seats.
> When she got up to see what it was she found a needle sticking out Of
> the seat with a note attached saying a quote; 'You have just been
> infected by HIV' quote..
>
> The Disease control Centre in Melbourne reports many similar incidents
> have occurred in many other Australian cities recently.
> All tested needles are HIV Positive.
> The Centre also reports that needles have been found in the cash
> dispensers in ATMs. We ask everyone to use extreme caution when faced
> with this kind of situation. All public chairs/seats should be inspected
> with vigilance and caution before use.
>
> 17 people have been tested positive in the Western suburbs alone in the
> last 2 months!!! A careful visual inspection should be enough.
> In addition they ask that each of you pass this message along to all
> members of your family and your friends of the potential danger. We all
> have to be careful at public places! This is very important.
> Just think about saving a life of someone even you don't know by
> forwarding this message. Please, take a few seconds of your time to pass it along.


I replied:

Just another urban legend, disproved many times.
No reports of people purposefully leaving HIV-positive blood-filled syringes to infect others have ever been recorded. Try asking your local police station.

Also:
HIV does not remain viable outside a host indefinitely. Inside a well sealed-syringe; maybe about a month. On the tip of a needle; only a few hours.

You can't test for HIV in 2 months.

It takes at least about 6.

HIV is not as infective as this email would have you believe. You can prick yourself 100 times repeatedly and the probability would still be higher that you would be uninfected. For the 17 people in this hoax to have been infected, more than 5000 people would need to have been pricked by more than 5000 needles left in more than 5000 seats and ATMs across Australia. Even assuming that those needles were prepared by psychotic homocidal AIDS patients who used 1 litre of their own blood to make a HUNDRED 10ml infected needles EACH, you still need at least 50 psychotic homocidal AIDS patients working together day and night to pull this off.

Before you start forwarding, the email about: the melting contact lens, the computer virus CNN and Microsoft are panicking about, plastic bottles causing cancer, Colgate causing cancer, Coca-cola causing cancer, the little girl with no face who will stab you at night if you don't forward her email to 300 people, the maggots growing in breasts, the petrol exploding if your cellphone rings, the UFOs, Godzilla, Bill Gates giving you money for emails you forward, the widowed princess in Nigeria who wants to give you 12 billion dollars, shampoo causing cancer, and sitting still and not forwarding emails causing cancer, are in fact all quite untrue.


'The squirrel has not yet found the acorn that will grow into the oak that will be cut to form the cradle of the babe who will grow to slay me.'

Time in Time Forgotten: A Strange Dream

Time in Time Forgotten; that was the clue I had.
I was looking for something; something of massive importance, but I didn't know what it was.
All I knew was that clue I had. I didn't know its significance, or where I had found it, or what I was looking for, or why. But I had to find it.

I was in a room.
It was old; falling apart, even.
In front of me were two closed windows. I knew that beyond them was not the outdoors, but more of the house's interior. To the left of the windows was a door. It was locked. It led into a corridor. How I knew this was inexplicable; the door was the only way into the room and yet it was not how I had entered.
The room was lined by rotting brown cupboards. The wall above was a pale, peeling, sickly green. It was a hateful colour.
I did not look at the ceiling, but it must have been full of holes because sunlight filtered weakly in; reflecting off a million particles of dust that hung lazily in the stale air. It was my only illumination.

I searched for the thing I had to find; Time in Time Forgotten.
It was well hidden, but I found it quickly.

Above one of the rotting cupboards, there was a small old wooden clock. It had stopped working long ago. It had been painted completely with the same sickly green paint that covered the walls, which rendered it well camouflaged. Only someone looking for it would have seen it.
The paint had covered the old clock so completely that it had more or less been glued to the wall. The very space between the clock and the wall had been completely filled in by the paint.
I scraped the paint away around the sides and pulled the clock down. It was dusty and ancient.

I put the clock face downwards and pried the back off.
There, hidden in the clock's mechanical innards, was the inside of a small wristwatch. The strap, back, and face were all missing. All that was left was the internal mechanism. It would not even have been recognizable to most people as a watch, but as a child I had taken many apart and was familiar with what they looked like. Attached to it was a small strip of metal which I recognized immediately from my old highschool chemistry classes. It was magnesium tape.
Whatever I was looking for was inside the workings of this wristwatch, and the tape was attached to it for some reason. What I held in my hand was vastly important. That was all I knew.

Suddenly, the knob on the door rattled. Someone was trying the lock.
I went to look through the cracks in the wood.
A silhouette moved behind the door, and an eye stared right back at me. There was someone there trying to get in; trying to get at what I had found, and they were deeply malicious. They wanted the watch, and they wanted my life.
A fist pounded at one of the windows where yet another person was trying to get in. There were two of them out there.
I was trapped. They wanted the watch, and the window was not going to hold. They would get in soon, and the implications of that were horrifiying, though I did not completely understand why.
I cast my eyes around desperately, looking for something; anything which I could use to my advantage. Something to defend myself with, a means to escape, a place to hide the watch, anything.
The magnesium tape would burn like a fuse, I knew that much. Was there some way I could use that? As a weapon? Was it meant to light something in the watch? I did not know. In any case, there was nothing to light the tape with.
There was a wooden beam running above me. Could I hide the watch on top of it, out of sight?
No, the room was small and there weren't many places to search. It would be discovered immediately.

A fist burst through the window and scrabbled around for purchase. They were almost through now.

I ripped the magnesium tape out of the old mechanism and twisted it around my fingers a few times. I would have to find a replacement for the watch later.
This one, I used as a crude blade. I ran it viciously down the arm at the window; giving it a huge gash and drawing much blood. There was a loud cry of pain, but the arm did not withdraw. It continued to work at the window for a way to get in. The determination behind that arm was incredible. I kept slashing away at it, but they would not give up. They meant to get in, get the watch, and kill me.

There was nothing more I could do. They would be in the room shortly, and then it would all be over. I was frantic, my mind racing for ideas, but the better part of me was resigned. I had failed and would pay with not only my life, but some terrible, yet vague and unforseen consequence.

The windows gave way, and they got in.







SUDDENLY CONAN THE BARBARIAN CAME AND SAVED MY LIFE!

THE END.

Drive and Determination

I am absolutely determined not to kill a baby by accident; thus I am studying from the very beginning of the Paediatrics rotation.



If I kill a baby, it should be on purpose.


On a related note, the light at the end of the tunnel is finally visible. It looks like I may actually somehow graduate and become a doctor.

Wow.

Dr Me. Awesome!

I know that at this realization, hundreds will quake in their shoes and pull their covers tighter over themselves at night.

Finally, I will gradute from paying to suffer... to, well... getting paid to suffer I guess.
Hey, it's still an improvement. I'll take my small victories; they're all I've got.

Now, any of you have kids that need looking after? ';,,;'

Cheater

A group of us were sitting and having ice-cream when the subject of medical school exams at the UQ came up.

Someone pointed out that it was easy to cheat; which we all agreed on. Security is lax, and we often see rampant cheating occuring during certain exams.

Then someone mentioned that he would cheat, given the opportunity.

Fair enough. That someone did not exactly have the respect of many to begin with. It was no surprise, and it didn't really bother anyone what sort of moral compass he kept; that was his own business.

No.

What ruffled feathers was this.
The rest of us said we would not cheat. At that, he scoffed and called us liars in so many words. He told us that we were being ridiculous, challenged our claims of honesty, and basically told us that if we had seen an answer sheet or some such lying around, we would definitely have looked at it.
He also said that cheating in a medical exam would in no way reflect on whether you were a good doctor.

At this, everyone bristled. The table was quiet.
Some fairly stared at him, utterly shocked that anyone would say such things.
I said 'No, I'd say that it definitely WOULD reflect on what kind of doctor you were.'
And I refuted his accusation by saying that I had in fact been in that position; I was in an office alone with the next exam paper sitting on the table in front of me. I could have picked it up and read it with ease.
I did not cheat.

He said 'Yeah, that's different. You didn't do it because you were afraid of getting caught.'

A fuse blew right then. I could hardly believe my ears.
Just what the fuck was this guy thinking? Was he deliberately trying to earn a fist right in his slimy face?
Did he really think that just because he was a spineless cowardly scumbag, that it meant everyone else had morals as degenerate as his?

Are you fucking kidding me?
Which infected orifice did this dumbass pull that sort of claim out from?

'I would have cheated, so all of you would have as well.'?

Grow.
The.
Fuck.
Up.

I don't care how smart or right you think you are. I don't care that you might read this and know that I'm talking about you (it's pretty damned obvious to everyone who was there that night who I'm talking about, I'm making no attempts to hide it).

I want you to know that your behaviour is utterly offensive and disgusting.
PLEASE DIE IN A FIRE. THE GOD OF HATRED DEMANDS IT.