Ergonomics

Somebody at the AM forum asked a question about setting up their workspace so as not to give themselves carpal tunnel. This post is a copy of the reply I'm posting there. It's largely an excuse to post the stick figure illustration I made to help people figure out my back stretch directions.

At my last school I had an instructor who insisted that we get up and stretch every 15 minutes. Keep your back straight, both feet flat on the floor. Make sure your monitor is at eye level so you don't have to hunch or bend your head. Mine isn't adjustable so its propped up on a stack of books. Keep your wrists straight while you're typing and mousing.

I don't know if anybody else does this, it might be just me, but when I'm using a tablet I tend to tighten my grip on the pen until my knuckles go white. Every now and then I need to give myself a shake and make myself relax.

I know a really good back stretch which I shall try to describe. You stand up straight with your shoulders back. Extend your arms back and flex your wrists at a 90 degree angle, palms down. Press back behind you with the heel of your hand (you're not actually pressing on anything, I just mean that to be illustrative of the gesture). Then twist your arms so your elbows face in, then out. Then roll your head on your neck in each direction.

This stretch flexes all the muscles in your hands, arms, back and neck and it feels really good. Fair warning, it occasionally makes me go light headed. I was worried my description would be confusing so I I did a stick figure of it which I have attached here.

Goldfish Shoals and Q&A of Awesome

So here, after a ridiculous delay is the scratch piece I did for that Humane Society Auction back in April. It was a little hard to let this go actually since I spent hours and hours on it. I took white scratchboard, laid down several layers of color with oil pastels, and then scratched out these fish and all their ridiculous scaly details. Then I went back in with water color pens (ok, crayola washable markers, but real water color pens are like $3 each!) to get the washed effects on the fish.

This image came from a song lyric from the Red Dwarf theme song (which is an awesome show, btw), "I long to lie far away from here, drinking fresh mango juice, goldfish shoals nibbling on my toes, fun fun fun in the sun sun sun." Ok, it definately loses something in the translation to text but I love the line about goldfish shoals.

I have two more pieces of scratchboard (actually 3 if I want to dig that one out of the garage) and I want to come up with some equally great projects for them. Maybe a portrait of my chickens...

Actually that's not bad. One of the other pieces I submitted to the auction was an ink drawing of a pair of my roosters. One of them is my mother's favorite but I'm getting rid of him because he's a little jerk, and she is endlessly complaining that I gave that drawing away. And her birthday is next month. So that's one project down.

Oh right, I was going to mention the Q&A for Animation Mentor (which is frankly not a very good name for a school, but I get what they were going for). Anyway the Q&A was really great. It was a web conference session where we were all chatting and the people who were asking questions got pulled up on webcam so we could meet them. Only a few people in our group asked questions (including me!) but everyone was really cool. I made numerous snarky asides in the chat part, and I hope I didn't come off as an attention whore. But it was all the sort of obnoxious (hopefully) witty shit I would have said to whoever I was sitting next to if the whole thing were happening in an auditorium.

If you hate people talking during movies/presentations, never sit next to me. But I was paying attention the whole time!

Futurama: Proposition Infinity

"You wouldn't know perversion if it put clamps on your testicles."

Best quote ever.

Also George Takei. "I'm hugging him in spirit. Now he's hugging me back! Oh my."

George Takei is made of awesome.

So anyway, I just finished watching this week's NEW EPISODE OF FUTURAMA!!!1!!

And it was all about Pride! and to a lesser extent, Canada Day!

I was sad at the beginning when SPOILER!!


Kiff and Amy break up for no reason. Which made me sad. But then SPOILER!! They get back together at the end after a hilarious pro gay marriage commentary. I love when Bender goes to a camp run by the robot preacher to learn not to be robosexual anymore. Then he and Amy go to Gearwich Village Pride to campaign for equality in marriage legislation. Hedonism Bot is there in bondage gear. And it's amazing. Just like real Pride, which I was actually able to go to this year.

Seattle Pride was great (even though the parade was like 3 hours long). We saw a bunch of Dykes on Bikes and a lot of scantily clad people in body glitter shaking it on floats, and at the end a giant Flying Spaghetti Monster float with an entourage of sexy sexy pirates.

The most awesome thing by far was the group of baby Loggers (Loggers being the mascot of my Alma Mater, ALL MY LIFE I WANNA BE A LOGGER! HACK HACK! CHOP CHOP! Yes that's our school chant, and yes it's kind of disturbing, especially with the slashing hand gestures). But when I was at UPS we always had a tiny group of like six people marching. There were plenty of queer people at the school who would have marched, it's just that Pride takes place after the end of the school year and almost nobody was around because they were home for summer. This year the baby Loggers (as I somewhat patronizingly call them) actually dressed up like loggers in plaid shirts, suspenders, short shorts, and stompy boots. When they came near our little cluster of alumni and heard us HACK HACK, CHOP CHOP back at them they gestured for us to come march with them. I was sooo close to taking off and skipping the rest of the parade but I didn't want to ditch the friends I was watching the parade with. Alas, maybe next year.

Anyway, Pride and Futurama: two good things that go great together!

Pride and

Toy Story 3 was Awesome, also chickens and other miscellany

So I am opening up my student profile on the Animation Mentor website. This blog is listed as my website. So I need to post something that makes me sound cool. Oh no! Too late!

But Toy Story 3 was pretty awesome. I especially liked the part towards the end. If you've seen it, you know the part. If you haven't I won't spoil it. Except to say that to children of the right (wrong?) age it is potentially as traumatizing as Bambi. It was quite upsetting.

Was not actually super crazy about the very end, because I know a little something about being a college student who is over attached to childhood toys, but even I thought Andy was acting a little weird. But it's ok, because I was super crazy about pretty much the entire rest of the film. Sadly, I missed the first half of Night and Day (we thought the show was a 4:45 but it was at 4:35, we were actually trying to get there early, damnation) which makes me a little sad, but it's not like I can't see it again.

In other chicken related news, Captain Falcon is (well was) sitting again this time on a nest of her own beautiful blue eggs! I am letting her hatch them (but seriously, no more chicks this year!) because I love her blue eggs and want more hens laying them. With my luck all the chicks will be roos. But since she was only sitting for a couple days when another hen decided to go broody and instead of sharing the clutch (like the last pair of hens I had who went broody, which was super cute) she just kicked Captain Falcon off the nest. I am actually fine with this because this hen (nameless I'm afraid) is ind of more of a badass that the good Captain and I think she'll be a better momma.

But the babies! Captain Falcon's babies ended up being named Captain Planet, Spock, and Yum Yum (Yum Yum is my gorgeous favorite and I'm 98% she's a girl. If she's not I will be devastated). There are three new babies (the ones with two mommies) and they don't have names. Probably won't until their gender becomes more apparent. But I know Captain Kirk is their dad, so something to keep in mind. But anyway, Captain Falcon's babies! I need more Falcon names. Obviously the first one that leaped to mind was Millennium because I am a nerd. The second was Peregrine. That's probably enough names for now. Once again, mustn't count them before they hatch and all that.

In other news, I really want to get a new job and think "I could waitress or whatever," then I remember that the reason I got this job was because it comes with health insurance. Curse you American health care system! But I had an eye appointment last week and ordered some new glasses which I am very excited about. My current glasses are several years old and the frames are scratched to hell and back. These new ones will be made of delicate filaments of TITANIUM, which obviously is awesome. And even though I am paying kind of a lot for them I would be paying twice as much without in-sewer-ants.

And really, seriously, truly, Intrepid Space Heroes installment 1 is nearly here.