Happy Halloween!

From Off the Mark; h/t: WEIT.

Happy Ēostre celebrations

Some Easter levity, courtesy of Jesus and Mo:

Enjoy your chocolate eggs/bunnies!

The perils of having a (soft) cat

Why Evolution is True posted this cartoon from lunarbaboon last week:

It’s never stopped me going to work but I’d be lying if I said that something like this (without the shoes) had not delayed me going to bed once or twice.

XKCD hits the spot again on climate change

A couple of weeks old but no less poignant:

Climate change deniers are quick to point out that there was still life on Earth at predicted future CO₂ levels and global temperatures. This is true. The problem is, that life did not include us, anything like us, or even anything much like most of the things we eat. Oh yes, and most of the world’s major cities being under water. :sigh:

It’s a position summed up frustratingly well by Doonesbury (via WEIT):

20% off The Cabbages of Doom

Yesterday was apparently International Waffle Day, which sounds a bit made-up to me but is excuse enough for Lulu.com to have a 20% sale until the 31st of March. Just use WAFFLESSAY20 to get 20% off The Cabbages of Doom (just 80p!) or for some graphic entertainment, I can recommend Jesus ‘n’ Mo.

We have a bit of situation

This genius cartoon is doing the rounds on Facebook thanks to I f**king love science. It's originally from XKCD. Despite the clear parallels with the recent Paul Broun nonsense, it's actually a pretty old one.

The problem is, the Universe not caring what we believe is not always a good thing. Take Mitt Romney's poor grasp of climate change, for example. We're in big trouble whether Romney thinks that we (or, more precisely, America) should do anything about it, or not.

The USA is one of the most technologically advanced nations on Earth and yet, despite this, some of its leading politicians are not only science illiterate but they seem to wear that illiteracy with pride, like some kind of badge of honour. That someone like Paul Broun can end up on the USA's House Science Committee (along with fellow Republican, Todd Akin) would be funny if it wasn't so downright disturbing.

I don't know what scares me more: the possibility of another Republican US President or the fact that it's even a real possibility that someone like Mitt Romney could end up wielding that much power. If US politicians do not wake up about Climate Change - and debate the issue at least - I fear that we are going to have a lot more than "a bit of situation".

I just didn't expect it to be so big

This has been doing the rounds but, in case you've not seen it, there is a full screen version of XKCD's recent epic Click and Drag comic XKCD 1110 in a zoomable version - visualization created by dividuum. It saves a fair amount of clicking and dragging and let's you seek out all the hidden bits in the sky and tunnels (and works especially well on an iPad). I just didn't expect it to be so big
There is also a recent interview with XKCD creator, Randall Munroe, in The Atlantic, which is worth a read.

h/t WEIT.

What If? (XKCD+)

For those who haven't already seen it, the outstanding XKCD comic now has a weekly "What If?" section,

"answering your hypothetical questions with Physics, every Tuesday"

or, as the main site puts it:

"abusing science to answer hypothetical questions".

I prefer this second description as the second question answered ("What if everyone who took the SAT guessed on every multiple-choice question? How many perfect scores would there be?") does not seem to have much to do with Physics. The inaugarul entry, however, "What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?", has a definite Physics theme and is highly entertaining, complete with great XKCD illustrations. (The footnote at the end is also most excellent but I won't spoil the punchline here!)

Manga cats

As part of my quest to develop artistic skills, I invested in a copy of The Complete Book of Drawing Manga by Peter Gray. (This explains the slightly Manga-esque nature of my recent self-portrait, in case you were curious. I must confess that I have not really read much Manga but it is quite an appealing style to emulate, with bold colours and a distinctive appearance.

The book is really good and talks through the basics for drawing Manga with step-by-step instructions for drawing faces, figures and animals etc. What's really helpful is that it shows you how to build up the guide lines before adding the outlines and finally some colour. The layers in ArtStudio are particularly good for this. At first, I thought it would be limiting only having six layers but it's really easy to duplicate and merge layers, allowing you to build work up in stages and then flatten it and move on if you need more layers. I've found that four layers works really well for my style: a background layer, one for sketching guides, one for block colouring and one on top for outlines. It's then possible to insert an extra layer between block colours and the outline layer to safely experiment with highlights and shadows.

Although I have had an attempt at drawing people, and I have a few ideas in this area, I thought one fun thing to do (as much for the sake of having a focus as much as anything else) would be do make some manga-style characters from The Cabbages of Doom. To this end, I decided to do the cat tutorial from the book. As with the ArtStudio cat tutorial, I modified it a bit to be like our cat, Mia (above) and then repeated it as a bit more solidly-built tabby to be more like Arthur (left). There's definitely room for improvement but I'm fairly happy with the results as a first effort.

They look quite happy too.

Delete cookies?!

Sometimes an act of simple genius comes along that just needs to be shared! Well done, Fernandez, whoever you are!