CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

So, the grey-lead pictures on different backdrops were kind-of okay, but what if I wanted to have colours? I’d read somewhere that some artists used a grey-scale drawing to give them an idea of shade, so I decided to use my Rosebuds on Colorized Backdrop – Saturation 6 as a base. Here’s what I did: 1.       Imported the image I wanted to use. 2.       Saved it as Pink Rosebuds on Colorized Backdrop-Saturation 6. 3.       I selected the brush icon (9th symbol down in the left column of the Toolbox dock) 4.       I didn’t want a heavy mark, so I chose something that looked a bit fuzzy—the first blotchy symbol in the 9th row of the ‘Brushes’ dock. 5.       I also wanted to be able to see the grey-scale through the painting I did, so I went to the Tool Options box and changed the Opacity slide bar to 43.9 6.       I didn’t want the brush to be too big, so I changed the size to 20.00. 7.       I left the other options as they were. There will be time to discov

We have a couple of fruit trees in our backyard. I'm still not sure what kind of fruit trees they are, but the crimson rosellas, galahs and sulphur-crested cockatoos really like them, along with a variety of wild doves, pigeons, and wattlebirds. Here are few shots of the rosellas. This one is a young one. Whatever this is, it sure tastes good to these guys. Even if it's a little chewy... And that human is showing a bit too much interest. Oh, wait! There's a really nice one over there. Got it! If you want to see more, here are a couple of 'live' links to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijR6b_FD8KQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1updpuTMdvI For some facts, you can try: http://australianmuseum.net.au/Crimson-Rosella http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Platycercus-elegans http://www.oiseaux-birds.com/card-crimson-rosella.html http://members.tip.net.au/~mos/cr_ros2.htm

February was a very busy month - a month of change, even. I didn't get a lot of blogs read in February. I'll try to do better in March. In the meantime, these were the posts that caught my attention: http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/1252852.html http://authorearnings.com/the-report/ http://www.cracked.com/article_19719_6-terrifying-new-creatures-science-just-discovered.html http://www.cracked.com/article_19719_6-terrifying-new-creatures-science-just-discovered_p2.html Enjoy!

I did get some books read this month - mostly before I went to sleep - but not as many as usual. Here they are:

This week just gone was almost another wipe-out, but I managed to get 8,000 words completed on Saturday, which caught me up, okay on one project, brought me nearly up-to-date on a second and saw a third, fourth, and fifth cemented as ideas. Who knew? Still getting the hang of the study, family, work balance, but it’s coming along. Overview New words produced: 8,317 Old words revised: 0 Works completed: 0 Works revised: 0 Covers created: 0 (1-3 variations) Works published: 0 (2-3 release platforms) Works submitted: 0 Competitions Entered: 0 Tier 1 Tasks Annual 13: Added 1,189 words Annual 14: Added 3,487 words Extra Tasks Annual20A: Added 71 words Annual22: Added 3,142 words Anthology27: Added 428 words Publishing Tasks Created 1 blog posts for this blog; New Arrivals   The following ideas arrived this week: Annual20A: to do with poetry; Annual20B: to do with more poetry; Annual21: to do with flash fiction; Annual22