Category: Uncategorized

  • Summer Time, Outside Time

    Not much posting going on here over the hot months. The bulk of my creative efforts has been directed towards the non-digital, especially the garden. It’s constantly evolving, starting with two beds in the first year in our house, but now having 12 square beds, a big bed (currently dominated by zucchini plants), a greenhouse, a row on the side of the greenhouse for outdoor pots, and a fire pit area. I’m currently working on the greenhouse-opposite side to set up another pot row and get it all decorated out. I have plans to build a shed on the end of the greenhouse, but it just got too hot for that level of construction. Next year I may also work on building a drip irrigation system for the entire garden (the greenhouse has such a system already) instead of relying on the existing lawn sprinklers.

    I’m not completely avoiding digital creations – I just finished another run through the Sheshai the Purifier novel. Yet again, I found corrections and ideas to expand upon or better tell the story. No huge changes, though I did add mentions of another Great House, this one being the order of engineers called the House of the Hammer, bringing the total to six (Sword, Shield, Hand, Book, Eye, and Hammer). Doing 3D modeling here and there. I am working on something for the anniversary of this site switching to its current WordPress-powered form, which will happen in October.

  • Paying the tax

    Pride has been more meaningful to me this year, as my partner officially came out as bi recently. I am straight myself… well, I guess depending on the definition, eh Sheshai? Speaking of her, coming to terms with things has influenced my novel by a significant amount. Though it’s written primarily to appeal to my cis-het nature, I wound up writing in a number of characters that don’t adhere to the ‘norm’. I hope it doesn’t come off as pandering and instead comes across as coming from an honest place.

  • Put in a Blender

    Just a few days ago I decided to update to the new 19.10 version of Ubuntu Linux. Along with that came the latest version of Blender – 2.8. This version is a huge overhaul and they changed some fundamental things like how texturing works. In other words, it broke all of my existing stuff. Am I going have to get an earlier version of Blender to figure out how to update the old settings to be compatible with the new system, or am I going to rebuild texturing from near-scratch? At least the bitmap images are still there, just have to re-associate them, but there’s going to be a lot of rebuilding to do. Most of my materials used procedural textures and so far it doesn’t look like there’s a way to quickly import them. On top of that I have to learn the new setup. I’ve been sick for at least a week so this is just making me a bit crankier.

  • Ayra Katrin Library South Building

    I built a greenhouse in my backyard with my dad’s help this week. I also managed to build something virtually. A new site update in under a year!

    AKL South Building

    This is the south building of the Ayra Katrin Library. Previously it had a rectangular design, but while working on the underground floors I wound up changing the shape to better work with the layout of the underground and the tapering end of the ‘tail’ that it occupies. Each floor has a central room with the stairway, two side rooms, a larger room which serves as an office for a higher ranking member of the Ayra Katrin, and two small rooms in the front quarter-circle section – probably a restroom and a utility room. The top floor has a balcony room overlooking the hexagonal patio behind the main library building.

    This building is at the southern tip of Agwilcress and sits at a hilltop, making it highly visible from the south. This made me want to place some sort of sculpture to show off, and the new design includes a flat circular section of roof that was ideal to place it. I came up with a design that resembles a tree where the ‘leaves’ look similar to Agwilikan tails. These leaves hold up a large orb with a light inside.

    AKL Overhead

    Here’s an overhead view of the current library campus design, with the south building to the left.

    AKL South Building Previous

    Oh, and for reference, the previous south building design below. I don’t think I’ve ever posted a clear view of it.

  • A note about my life and CSD

    It’s been a stressful year so far, between work being very busy, working through some difficult family matters, and settling into a new house. For the free time I get, I’ve not been in the mood to put it towards my CSD projects. They tend to consume a lot of time for slow payoff and mean sitting in front of the computer a lot. Okay, so I still wind up spending a lot of time there anyways, but I tend to just surf the web and watch videos – mainly other people playing video games. I’ve done minor creative things here and there, but not really part of the CSD stuff I’d post here. It’s also summer, and I really should be spending more time outside.

    Sometimes I wonder why I keep this site going. I’m committed to an information technology career, and video game development just seems like a somewhat wasteful hobby at this point. It is almost assured that my game designs will never reach a production level, just concepts and tests. These are my stories and creative outlets though, and I do cherish them and part of me wants to see them be realized and presented to the world. I’ve wanted to make video games since 2nd grade, and in some ways I’ve partially achieved it. I’ve made some rudimentary games and virtual worlds. Just wish I had time outside regular living and maybe some extra talent to really flesh them out. Being able to walk through a living Agwilcress may be my biggest dream.

    Who knows if and when I’ll get something cooked up that I feel will be worth posting here.

  • Rebooting, again

    Once again, I’m starting back up. This time there’s some big changes: the website has moved to more appropriate crititcalsystemsdigital.com domain, and I’m using WordPress instead of hand-coding HTML. Now there’s just the matter of getting some content on here…