Blog Nosh Magazine

The one where I admit to not loving my kid.

Originally published on moosh in indy.

When the moosh came out I didn’t instantly fall in love with her.

I thought it was cool she came out with all her parts in the right place in seemingly right proportion.

But I was not in love.

I wasn’t in love with her when I brought her home.

I wasn’t in love with her three months after  I brought her home.

I felt a sense of obligation to her. But I didn’t feel love.

Stasis and Change in Left-Wing Politics and the Environment

Originally Published on Dr. J and Mr. K

The discussion in my last post about how the political left advocates change of every sort yet appears terrified of any change in the environment – or has adopted such a pose, at any rate – left the environmental portion for another day.

The quick and easy hit about refusing to “embrace change” in this one important area struck me as pointing to an important idea. Why do certain people think the environment should remain exactly as it was, when nature continually provides evidence of its (or, as another era would have put it, “her”) ability to produce unpredictable events and inflict cataclysm at every turn?

Some conservatives attempt to explain the fundamental weirdness of so many liberal or progressive policy prescriptions – especially on the environment – as flowing from the increasing disconnect of urban residents from the natural world. That seems to have merit. But this view is undermined by two things: first is the ubiquity of information media that bring nature’s acts – tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes killing tens of thousands – into the home or office, second is the burgeoning popularity of recreation out in the natural world, made possible by the very mass prosperity and personal mobility the left opposes. Nature’s real nature is on display before you, if you’re willing to look. Many appear unwilling.

Missing Manny - A Photoshop Tutorial

Originally Published on Blog O' the Baroness

The illustration on the right was for the little reader The Case of the Missing Manny, which was done for Imagine Learning. It happens on the set of a pirate movie, so this picture goes with the page when our detective Ace is interviewing Bob the costume designer. Bob, btw, hates pirates and wishes he could design costumes for sci-fi movies.

I've put together a big ol' tutorial on how I made this illustration. I tried keep it at the level of expecting the reader to know at least the basics of Photoshop, but if you are an expert at Photoshop, then a lot of the information will be old hat. If I've left big holes in my explanations, let me know and I'll be happy to make some edits.

Tools 

These are the brushes I will be referring to throughout the tutorial. I am pretty lazy with brushes - I stick with what works. All three brushes are in the default brush palette. The only customizing I've done is to save a couple more spatter brushes at smaller sizes. When I'm in a real hurry while shading, I'll just use the soft round brushes. The downside is that you get a slick airbrushy look that I don't always like. The spatter brushes give me a little texture to the brush strokes.

Some other general type information - I have two different setups. At my Imagine Learning office, I work on a PC. I have two 1200x1600 LCD monitors, an Intuos Wacom tablet, and Photoshop CS2. There's a screenshot of my desktop a little further down. At home I have essentially the same setup, only with a G5 mac and PS CS3. I personally prefer the mac over pc, but I've worked with both for so long, that it's not an issue for me. (Speaking of apple love, recently got an iphone and they are pretty much lots of awesome .)

This whole illustration was done in Photoshop from start to finish. Sometimes I use Flash or Painter, but for this tutorial, everything I refer to is happening in Photoshop, and I'll be using PC commands. If you use a mac, just replace Ctrl with Cmd.

Thumbnail

Here is my first sketch, which is essentially a thumbnail, even though it is done at actual size but lower resolution (72 dpi). I'm using a small round brush. It looks like it was maybe at 30% opacity. I’m not consistent with that. This first sketch is just to figure out what is happening in the scene and work out the general composition. Before starting any sketches for the project, I had already done some research, finding pictures of costume studios, pirate costumes, etc. to help come up with ideas.

Dear Spencer

Originally posted on:  Xbox4NappyRash

Dear Spencer,

I know you are only one among millions down there, but you're the one I feel I have a connection with, the one I can talk to. I see you as a leader among men. Well, semen at least.

We've been through a lot together, you, your buddies and me.  Remember the first time we met? That was an eye opener, certainly was for my stuffed animals anyway.

Over the next few years we had lot of good times, we met up with each other at every opportune moment, and quite a few inopportune ones.

In fact, to date, I can only think of one single occasion where we met that wasn't entirely pleasurable.

But things are changing...I'm not gonna butter you up, I'm gonna tell it to you straight.  You need to get your act together down there and get your crew in order.

Lets look at the facts.

Blind Men, Elephants...and Jesus??

Originally posted on PENSIEVE.

You would think becoming intimately acquainted with Jesus--getting to know Him, learning to love Him--is as simple as reading the Bible's four gospels. 

Until you read them back to back, and on the surface, see four portraits of the same man.  Four very different portraits of the same man.

Because I never before read all four gospels in succession, a while back it occurred to me that immersing myself in these "biographies" would give me a clearer picture of Jesus.   Rather than read them in the order they appear in Scripture (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), I read them John, Mark, Luke, Matthew; random, yes, but going from John to Mark paints a p.r.e.t.t.y. interesting picture.

Cellphones for Kids - Nightmare or Pleasant Dream?

Originally published on The Suburban Scrawl

Let’s face it: teenagers are good at making others, especially their parents, nervous.  If you’re the parent of a young child, you are probably dreading the teen years because of all the horror stories you’ve heard from others, not to mention the memory of what you did at that age.  In fact, the Teen Years are nothing to be scared of.  All you need are a few tools to help you navigate the road, including a sense of humor and lots of patience!

My two teen-aged boys are great kids, and my husband and I are very proud of the consistency with which we’ve raised them.  One of the most successful strategies we’ve used with our boys is to let them know what we expect in advance and sometimes in writing (you never know when you’re going to need proof of policy; also, it’s best to close those loopholes from the get-go!).

We used this strategy for the first time when we set up our older son with his cell phone on his fourteenth birthday.  Unlike most of his friends, who were gifted with a no-obligation cell hone by their parents a couple of years before, our son knew that it was absolutely a big deal when we decided he was ready for one.  When he read the rules we prescribed for his cell phone, he was – in a very un-teen like manner – seemingly relieved.  A teen from another planet?  No.  Just a great kid.

Photography - Holding Your Viewer's Attention

Originally posted at Beyond Megapixels.

One of the most important things your photo should have is an ability to hold your viewers attention. There are a lot of techniques that can be used to help you compose your shot so that people will spend more than a second looking at it. Besides keeping your viewers focused on your photo, the techniques below can also help emphasis your main subject.

There are many ways to hold your viewer's attention. Here are five that you can easily start off with:

1. VIGNETTE

A vignette is a gradual loss of light and picture quality towards the edge of the photo due to poor lens construction. Although it is considered a lens aberration, a vignette is helpful in drawing the viewer's attention towards the center of the photo. It also adds character to a photo since it makes it look like it was taken with an old camera.

CC Photo by australian overanalyzer

To add a vignette to an existing photo with Adobe Photoshop, refer to our previous article found here.

2. SHOOT THROUGH A FRAME

This is probably one of the oldest tricks in the book. You simply choose an object you can shoot through that frames your main subject.

'Til Death Do I Part

Originally published at Mommy Pie.

I own three bridesmaid dresses. I’ve been to countless wedding ceremonies. I’ve happily purchased hundreds of dollars worth of gifts for my friends’ celebratory passages into traditional family life.

Most of those unions have lasted. Some have not.

With my 40th coming up in just a few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about about time, and fate, and the very different, and sometimes unexpected, paths our lives all take.

However I got here, this is my life. I embrace it wholeheartedly. And I wonder, where’s the ceremony for singles who have found in themselves the one they’ve been looking for all along? What about the ones who, for better or worse, never do marry another?

(editor's note:  absolutely hilarious photos after the jump, so seriously do continue reading)

Clay

Originally Published on Bring The Rain

This has been a hard week.

Just six words, but they pretty much sum it up.

After crying through basically every human interaction I have had for the last several days, I realized that there was something in me that needed to be broken.  Something that I hadn't felt completely yet.  Todd left to go on the road on Wednesday night, and I sobbed like a baby. Shaking, gasping, "why can't you be an accountant and work 9-5?" tears.  I was not ready to be alone with my thoughts yet.  I wasn't ready to be in charge of the kids, of the house, of anything that did not involve Kleenex.  As he left the house around 11:30 p.m., I curled up in my bed and I invited the sorrow in.  She came swiftly, deeply, consumingly.  And she whispered to me in the dark of night.

I am here to stay.

We had a rainstorm yesterday (go figure), and I made up my mind that I needed to be with my daughter for awhile.  As soon as it started to let up, I called my dad and he came to watch the kids so that I could go to the cemetery. I have wanted to go to her many times before, but I haven't had the strength to be weak.