The art bug has bitten me recently. I don’t know why, but I’ve been on a huge comic kick - reading Scott Pilgrim comics and checking out Bryan Lee O’Malley’s art archive, reading other Flight comics artists, reading Questionable Content and feeling very jealous of all of these fellow artists who jumped from comic amateur to pro just by going for it.
So I’m drawing again - yay! Check out my first in progress piece in a while below. I have a number of other ideas, and will probably do another mini comic for the nieces and nephews sometime soon. This eats a lot of time though ;-). But my brain is more creative and happy. Click image for full size, and stay tuned for more artwork! Also, compare this version vs. the earlier - Franny’s shoulder was too high before, and Isaiah needed an outfit. But I lost something in Franny’s smile…
Shirley Bell Designs has hundreds of beautiful images. And Google Image search isn’t indexing them. Why not? Apparently it doesn’t like dynamically generated pages (ie with URL parameters and the like) in between the crawler and the image. No problem - I created this simple image page listing every one of Shirley’s paintings with a clear title, link to a neatly formatted image and a link to the original jpg (example: black lab). Google re-crawled the site, checked this page out (it is in the sitemap) and then decided not to index it. Why? Bizarre. Guess I’ll have to dig deeper.
This is a shame though. I imagine many gallery sites are dynamic such as this one, and if Google can’t index them it is missing out on many many images on the web. I know I use Google Image search all the time for clip-art, etc. and yet I never realized it wasn’t doing a good job on the indexing side.
Allow me to (re)introduce Shirley Bell Designs! Shirley is a longtime neighbor and family friend, and it’s been my pleasure to help appropriately showcase her beautiful artwork online. New site features include an improved image gallery, better information about the artist, and the ability to purchase her artwork online. We’re also doing some tentative marketing, to increase organic search results as well as generate paid search leads. This is actually a very interesting process - I recommend everyone try it for something.
I chose PayPal for a payment solution. The downside is the shopping cart isn’t perfectly integrated, and the prices are slightly higher than Google Checkout’s, however unlike Checkout PayPal allows purchasing without PayPal accounts, which significantly increases the number of potential customers.
My favorite bit is the “we believe ” section. A sample: “we believe in keeping our designs simple and clean, leaving room for the card giver to add a message the artwork may reflect.”
James and Lauren are engaged! Woohoo! Yippee! So exciting. Here is the official rocketmonkeys post with pics.. In the meantime, I’m not surprised but so happy for them both. Go James! There’s lots of pressure on “the guy” to make the engagement super special romantic etc. Sounds like James did a good job - chatting with him yesterday brought back a flood of memories from that time in Franny & my life - funny how it wasn’t that long ago. The happier you get the faster the time goes by…
1. Franny and I got a pair of iPhones. Oh so wonderful, and quietly fits in a pocket. Now I can annoy people with all of my Isaiah pics and having internet wherever we are has changed a lot of behaviors. I feel like this is the future ;-).
2. New car too - Toyota FJ Cruiser. The Jeep wasn’t cutting it with a baby in the back. Crazy thing - gas prices could triple and we’d still save money vs. buying a hybrid 4WD car. Nuts. Come on car companies, give us something better.
3. And as always, lots more Isaiah pics and vids are up. He is huge (23.5 lbs, 31″, 95th percentile all around). Almost walking, says Mama, Dada, Up, and lots more sounds. Crawling around like crazy, cruising from one piece of furniture to another, pushing chairs around the kitchen. Check them out.
More Isaiah photos are up! Of course, the sheer amount of photos/videos we take of him implies 1 of 2 things: (1) he will be over-represented in the family archives, or (2) we will have to set ourselves quotas for photo/video of follow-on children . These are problems we can manage!
Update: switching over to Flickr, until then photos unavailable
Say hello to Isaiah Joseph Murray, our new baby boy! Vital stats: 9lbs 10.4oz, 22″, born 4/20 at 11:45pm. Franny did this au natural, which was impressive (and fast - only 45 minutes of pushing - she was a rockstar!) He is huge, and rock solid. The nurses said he was the strongest baby they had ever seen - they had to use all their weight to pin him down for shots, etc. Too funny!
Update: switching over to Flickr, until then photos unavailable
Isaiah is primarily named after Isaiah in the bible, though there
are other great Isaiahs we are thinking of as well. Isaiah means “God
is salvation” or “God is my helper”. Our favorite Isaiah verse:
I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: ‘Whom shall I send, and who
will go for Us?’ Then I said, ‘Here am I! Send me’ —Isaiah 6:8
One of our favorite “other Isaiahs” is Isaiah Berlin, who wrote about
individual freedoms in society, distinguishing between positive and
negative liberty (arguing for freedom to be securely in the hands of
individuals and only grudgingly relinquished to the state). As
independants and libertarians, this strikes home with Franny and I.
Franny and I just discovered Comic Life, which came bundled on our new MacBooks. For those not in the know, it is a brilliant application that makes it easy to compile photos and more into comic strips, complete with word bubbles, etc. For those of us who love documenting memories but hate typical scrapbooks… this is a god-send. It is also fun for all kinds of neat little projects. We created a fun little adventure comic starring our nieces and nephews - some teasers are included below. Click on them for the full comic at phanfare.
Update: switching over to Flickr, until then photos unavailable
Francesca and I splurged - new MacBooks! This is our last capital expenditure prior to the baby’s arrival - Franny’s laptop (Sony P.O.S.) was dying its final death, and my Dell 700m, which was a trooper, was killing my hands (tiny keyboard) and eyes (tiny screen). The MacBooks fit the bill - beautiful machines. Franny’s has 2GB RAM, mine only has 1GB . Small hard drives - we’ll need to upgrade in the near term (only 60GB… almost full already). We’re running OS X, no problems switching our lives (though we have the windows desktop left for special cases).
James the Rocketmonkey got us Techshell covers - they are very cool. Helps us figure out which laptop is which. Actually, he ordered us 1 Techshell, and they sent the wrong one, so we got to keep a free pink one. It worked out perfectly, and they were very good about it. When we were looking into these, we couldn’t find any good photographs of what they actually looked like - for some reason the website itself doesn’t have close-ups. So after setting up our new MacBooks and getting the covers on, we took some photos to share with the world :
Update: switching over to Flickr, until then photos unavailable
and having internet wherever we are has changed a lot of behaviors. I feel like this is the future ;-).
. These are problems we can manage!
. Small hard drives - we’ll need to upgrade in the near term (only 60GB… almost full already). We’re running OS X, no problems switching our lives (though we have the windows desktop left for special cases).