2009-11-03

Shaw and Star Trek

I don’t know what’s up with Shaw these days.
We have had terrible internet connection speeds for a month or so now, they slipped up on their initial appointment but credited us for it, then after the tech guy did finally do a check-up and found nothing wrong (last week) the speed dropped even more…until a few hours ago when, by some odd coincidence, I happened to be on the page that advertises Shaw’s internet connection Speed Test.
I left the speed test ( which said I had a download speed of just under a megabyte per?…it took about 2 minutes to finish the test and when I came back to run it again it finished in about 15 seconds. A few more kbs to it’s credit but after I exited the page everything started to download like it had before we ever had the problem.
I was getting pretty angry about this considering we pay for the privilege of high speed and weren’t getting it for quite a while- I think there was or is something going on that they are not telling us about and even though I’m happy that things are back to normal I am having doubts about the service- why can’t they inform people in an e-mail that there will be issues?
Anyways, I’m writing today to share some art- more Star Trek stuff!
Here is a link to my web page as opposed to Deviant Art for those of you who would like to see more Star Trek stuff without having to wade through DA.
I’m trying to expand my style of drawing to include more colour ( with pencil crayon mostly ) and pen and ink as well:

Big view at DA
Marc Alaimo at IMD
Gul Dukat- my favorite villain of all the series done in pen and ink over a rather sloppy original drawing and then had a bit of blue colour washed over it. I am still surprised at how well it turned out.

Big view at DA
Nichelle Nichols at IMD
Uhura from the original series- I like the right side of the drawing better than the left which looks somewhat out of focus ( her expression ). This is really the first portrait I’ve done on coloured paper with pencil crayon that didn’t just start out as a sketch that went remarkably well. I was committed to it in other words and despite certain disappointments I consider it a good first attempt.

Big view at DA
Ricardo Montalban at IMD
Khan from the O.S. A lot of preparation went into Khan and then I decided to use a different picture from the ones I originally sketched from. A lot went wrong with this but I consider the resemblance to be good so whatever may be horrid in technique I managed to achieve a likeness which was always an issue for me.
Feel free to comment since honesty is appreciated not to mention the time taken to do so.
One of these days I would like to go to a Star Trek convention/event- preferably one that has the DS9 cast and Shatner and Nimoy in attendance!

2009-11-01

Barriere

It was a gorgeous day today so we decided to drive out to Barriere
which is about 2 hours north of us. When we were house hunting we were actually considering moving that far north but now of course I’m glad we didn’t since I’ve become pretty fond of Merritt.
Barriere and the surrounding area suffered a massive forest fire in 2003 which really hurt the community since the fire took out one of the major employers- the Lois Creek sawmill.
There are ragged patches of mountain all around with blackened toothpick trees still standing but it doesn’t look that bad. The whole area is situated at the confluence of the North Thompson and Barriere Rivers and doesn’t have what I would call a really thick forest to start with- mostly needle type trees that don’t grow densely packed together.



I was expecting the area to look a lot worse. We had a nice lunch at a cafĂ© ( just north of the A&W- can’t remember the name ) and then just cruised around the area. On our way back we stopped at a few pullouts to take pictures and at McClure we took a ferry over the river to drive back to Kamloops on Westsyde road which would allow us to be closer to the water and have better light for photography.
The ferry is one of those little ones that hold 2 cars or one truck and trailer and is pulled along a cable. Cute!



While it’s still pretty rustic in these parts Westsyde road is paved all the way south to Kamloops – I asked beforehand because at this time of the year the roads get nasty and dangerous and not worth going on if they’re logging roads.
Oh, before I forget- I saw something really stupid. At one of the pullouts ( Fishtrap Rest Area ) there was one of those typical tourist information signs- all nicely set up under a wooden structure except for the fact that the map of the area was placed sideways on the panel. Not only was it placed sideways it was DESIGNED SIDEWAYS AND RIGHT SIDE UP!



I couldn’t believe it. The text was normal but north was facing west. The “N” was a “Z”! It was almost as if someone thought that Barriere didn’t rate to have it’s town properly displayed because it didn’t suit the panel’s horizontal format. Barriere is laid out north to south not east to west.
To make it worse, the sign is physically set so that North, which points West, is actually angled to the south/south-west.
The person walking behind the sign is walking north, in the direction of Barriere to make it simple. This just chokes me. :(
Anyways, the drive back was quite lovely with a constant view of the N. Thompson river and big and little hobby farms scattered throughout.
Closer to Kamloops there was actually a cornfield- the first I’ve seen in that area – they grow mostly alfalfa out here. And then the deer. Unbelievable. I counted 22 of them while my husband and I were taking pictures. They were all fat and rather placidly filling their stomachs on the green grass. I wanted to take a picture with my husband’s camera, which has a really long zoom, which I was able to prop up on the rolled down window just in time to catch 2 bucks mock fighting. That was quite something as I’ve only seen that behavior in videos.
So that was how we spent today. :)


Bigger at DA :)