Sunday, January 27, 2013

Monkeys and leverage! AND A PENGUIN

So I promised, right?

Theres one very fascinating thing about monkeys. Apart from their being so acutely humanoid, of course. Smart, they can be graceful, they can be evil and they can be nice. So much like humans... Or humans being so like them, rather than the other way around. 

Anyhow, more thrilling to such a meathead as myself is the fact that monkeys are strong. Unbelievably so. A typical monkey of random species outmatches a human with similar musclemass, to a score of maybe 4 to 1. The muscle itself is the same, all muscle tissue is. Human muscle has its limitations, as does monkey muscle. One kilo of said monkeys muscle does not contract harder than the human muscle. Well then, how can they be so much stronger, then?

Because leverage. Monkeys use leverage, and in a very effective manner, much moreso than humans do. Not leverage as in levers, per se, but as a physical phenomenon, right down to how their muscles are built, and more importantly, situated.

So a monkey has a bicep, right? Just like us. What makes the monkeys bicep different, is that it connects higher on the elbow than the human muscle does. Its brilliant, if you need strength. Absolutely brilliant, I think. What does it mean? Well, let me give you a more traditional example of physical leverage.

Doors swing around hinges, and door handles are placed as far away from the axis of rotation (The hinges) as possible. The reason is obvious, right? Have you ever tried to open a door by pushing it with your hand, close to the hinge? Its simply not effective. With our great analyzing skills, we deduct that forces exerted farther away from an axis of rotation are more effective than forces exerted close to the axis of rotation (for free floating bodies, the axis would be the centre of gravity.). 

You can even try using leverage right now. Push your screen, with your finger. Go on, push it. Push at the lower part of the screen, and it wont fall over very easily, and youll have to push very hard, or it might simply start sliding, without rotating whatsoever. Now push at the topmost part of the screen, and it tilts right away, with barely a sweat. Leverage, fuck yeah. 

What does that mean for monkeys? It means, that their biceps have larger leverage, and a longer distance between the axis of rotation, the elbow, and the point unto which the force is exerted, than humans do. Its brilliant, and it makes their muscle so much more than ours. You know, we dont view them that way, but an agitated enough monkey could rip your head off, or tear your ribcage in half with great ease! Theyre that strong!

Why dont humans have similarly built muscles? Well, its simple. A muscle can only contract so-so fast, invariably of how strong it is. Theres a limit to how fast a muscle cell can do its thing. If the leverage is larger, the muscles have to contract faster in order to keep up with a muscle with lower leverage, like humans. So basically, it comes down to what were adapted for. Humans use actual levers, we dont need this strength anymore. We had it, once. But modern humans need to throw spears and such, favoring speed over raw brawn, so natural selection made us weaker.

Ill say, though. I am no biologist, I know not which monkey species is the strongest, and I make no differentiation between the different species. They do use leverage though, which is PHYSICS. Leverage is also known as Torque, for those of you who are confused.


AND ART



Clearly not amused penguin-man. And a marxist-octopus! From my physics and english notebooks respectively. These were the only drawings in my schoolwork! I havent even been doodling alot lately, what is it with me?!

And yeah, all my tech-stuff is still broken, and I havent been drawing alot lately, either. I know the material has been kinda weak lately.



And thats my actual drawing notebook. XD It never gets as much attention as my physics notebook. And those tiny lizards are tiny lizards just as my gym-class teacher from sixth grade used to draw them! God, those were some nice lizards.


Lol. After writing all this to compensate for a week of not blogging, I come the stark realization that no one is going to read it all. I write too much, god damn. 

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Coffee and cupception.

Coffee. A year ago, I hated the taste. Today, I drink it every day! Lemme just list some of the Pro's of coffee here now;

1. Its delicious. Its an aquired taste, sure, but its one youll come to love and welcome, like a trusty friend, always there. Coffee is the saffron of liquids, the truffle in everyones cup. It is the imbibeable gold of the equatorial belt, the Mona Lisa of refreshments. Yet unlike all these, coffee is not expensive. Hypothetically, just imagine not affording it, drinking some half-arsed quasi-brittish tea instead. BLERGH. Price leads me to the next point.

2. Coffeine, delivered in coffee, ought to be the worlds cheapest and most readily availible psychoactive drug. It provides a kick, atleast to newfound lovers of the bean-derived exhilarative. Its glorious. Apart from making you feel good, studies show it shorthandedly improves your memory, and helps you focus.

3. Its a social experience. It creates routines, that one may come to love. Morning coffee, at lunch, in the afternoon, after dinner, and always best enjoyed in the company of others. To me, going out for a cup of coffee with my dear friends is absolute bliss. Wonderful time. Not directly because of the coffee, but the fellowship and the sense of community that forms around and with it. People find each other in the swirling depths of a coffee cup. The Fellowship of the bean. 


They told me my addiction has gone too far. HAH, I can stop whenever I want...
The face-adorned cups strike again, my friends. Its beautiful. Once again, the phone camera flash created this funky vignette, for which I apologize. Im actively looking for solutions to my perilous technological situation. Kinda.

FOR NEXT TIME, I PROMISE MONKEYS AND MUSCLES. UNTIL THEN, AU REVOIR.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Divine entropy, among other things.

Oh gee. Entropy, man. Entropy.

What is it? Why, its nature's relentless strife towards chaos and disorder, of course! Honestly, that didnt tell me much when I first learnt about in school, either. There are ample examples of it, though. E.g. the spreading of heat is entropic behaviour - 2 orderly clumps of different temperatures will in time merge into one big mess of unorderliness, and thats how it always is. Its order transitioning into a more chaotic state, where patterns and borders are harder to find.

Thats thermodynamic entropy. Im sure it plays different roles in different fields of science, but thats the only example I know of. Entropy in itself isnt all that interesting, after all.

What I actually wanted to write about was entropy in a symbolic perspective. You know, how it seems to affect our lives, in times of distress. It acts like erosion, nabs and nips at foundations weve built for ourselves, undermining the pedestals upon which habits, families, societies, nations. I think its interesting that I atleast dont know of any religions based upon it, if there are any. Godly forces dithering away at the craftsmanships of a distracted man. It would provide an answer to the question; "Why do bad things happen to good poeple?", and isnt that kind of stuff what religion is about, in its core? Safety.

Seeking inside ourselves, answers about the afterlife are distant. Having a priest tell you youre going to this utopic heaven-place, whoah, isnt that a relief? Its safety. Safety from all the potential bad things, Safety which allows you to take your mind off the bigger questions and focus on your own. Humans need it. The part about devoting oneself to a church is not so much a religious phenomenon, but one that is designed to create followers. Besides spiritual relief, Religion is a business. Its a for-profit concept. If I were a bolder man, I would claim its even marketing, in the right circumstances.

Entropy. It tears down love-relations that once seemed so stone-fast, it tears away at your health, destroying your mothers hard work, and it tears at all the results of all your toils, forcing you to go back and start again. Theres no blame to be cast, theres just Godly entropy. I could totally see that becoming a thing. Most religions tend seem naive in an objective perspective anyway. 


I have one notebook, and about half of it is notes, and the rest is art. Often on the same page.


Yeah. Im just letting my mind wander, there is no particular incident that triggered this entropy-text. But among other things, and relevant to you, my readers, my PC did break down the other day. That means I will have some difficulties making art for my entries, as most of my material goes via or is created on my PC before it reaches the internet and this blog. To further fuel that fire, my camera ran out of juice, and I cant find the battery charger. That means I cant post any pictures of traditional art, either. I took the above photo with my phone, and im writing on my older brothers PC. Cant do any digital art on this PC, and the phone camera sucks.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Trajan, Jesus and Batman etc.

Ugh, I feel obligated to write something. I mean, I dont have anything better to do, I havent written for some time, and people keep checking back, and I feel bad for not updating fast enough. But LOTR is on TV... So  viewable... Which actually reminds me of something I can blog about! Namely Trajan.


This is Trajan. (NOT THE ROMAN EMPEROR)


Do you see it yet? All of the titles above use variations of one single typeface; Trajan, The movie font. Its overwhelmingly the most popular font for movie titles. Not only there, youll also find it in videogame covers, e.g. like most wording in the Assassins Creed franchise, and advertisement for Trojan Condoms... A rather amusing connection, if I may say so myself.

Technically, it a very basic font. Lower-case letters look the same as upper-case, just smaller, and the shape is very old fashioned. Sans-style, discreetely simple. (And you better be looking up the difference between discrete and discreet right now, because they are not one and the same.) A term commonly used when describing fonts is Serif. There are mainly 2 types of fonts, Sans-serif, and serif. Sans is french for "Without", and serifs are frills, or such, at the edges of the letters. This is Helvetica, a popular sans-serif font. And This is Georgia, a serif typeface. Note the differences in the 2 capital Ts.

So there you go. I hope youre now ready and able to analyze and categorize fonts and typefaces accordingly. Perhaps not the most useful info, but hey, if thats what youre after, you might as well go read a fucking book. No? I thought so.

^this guy knows his fonts.

Anyhow, I picked up my little brothers old markers and drew this guy. Ive just been drawing a lot of old people with great beards recently... Ive no idea why.

On a note related to my previous entry;


My blog is now officially divine. Yesterday, someone googled for Jesus Christ, but came to this blog. Whats also curious is that läderlappen is there, too. Its Batman, in swedish. You still think your blog is good? Im the fucking Batman, bitch.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Searchtags and dejavu

Ahh, as an artist, every once in a while comes along something you grow really proud of. This is one is one of those. Drawn in the late night, almost 6 months ago, it remains one of my proudest moments, and its the second time I show it on the blog now. I realized I had made a slightly improved upon version since that time, and because that old entry is now hidden in the dark pages of this blog, id say it warrants a new entry! And by dark pages, I mean the entries I wrote before I revealed the blog to friends and family, entries that rarely get any attention anymore.


By all means, click me. I look even creepier in fullscreen.

A sweaty ass cyborg-ish head, thats what it is, for those wondering. Id much rather be remembered for that than the hitler-tank. What makes me say that, you ask?

That brings me to the funny shit I didnt write about last time. Bloggers have access to traffic sources, right? Like what people typed in google to get here, for example. As I said in the other entry, I recently uploaded a drawing on facebook. It was without a link to this blog, which forces those who would like to visit the blog to google for it (Because the name of the blog is... Immemorable.) And shit, you guys get by some pretty damn weird searches.


So the most common search is just regular searches including my name and the blogs name. Then we have these few stalkers that google for my full name with date of birth (Gee, you could just ask me for the link instead...).

So thats pretty regular stuff. The third most used search path is "hitlertank painting". Really guys? Is that what I will be remembered for? aww sigh :c Im still ok with this, were still friends.

BUT THEN comes along this poor little feller, who googled for "egopics", and found my blog that way. Yeah. He was probably not searching for this blog, BUT WHA THE FLYING FUCK..!? THAT WAS ONE TIME. AND IT WASNT EVEN AN EGOPIC! Not fucking funny, Google. Luckily, I dont show up with that search anymore.


Then theres a few random ones like
"victor vs bitmaps" -dafuq?
"sad sketch elvis" Now thats just mean :c
"victor crap blog" HEY!
"tall men more attractive total bullshit" Oh you.. You little motherfuckers ._. I googled it myself, thinking it couldnt be true. Turns out, though, its the topmost fucking result :#


Heres the grand finale...! 3 lucky googlers got to my blog by googling for.... "mghyuug". Yeah, thats right. You heard it. Searching for mghyuug will bring you 2 links to some weird nonsensical half-taiwanese code-charts, and a link to my blog, an entry about water and vector art... mgh-fucking-yuug.

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Butterfly-eye w/o butter-

 UGH. What does one do, when one has run out of butter? On a normal day, one runs down to the store, buys some more. NOT TODAY, because today a minority of us commemorate the Holy Epiphany, and stores are closed. Douche move, God. Cursed I feel, for my bread is henceforth butterless, until the day.. Erh, tomorrow.

Despite this unfortunate bout of starvation and this general state of misery, I will write about FUN STUFF and SWEET ART. I suggest we start out with SWEET ART.


The motive? Well... Butterflies and eyes..? Idk, more like sleep deprivation, actually.

I was asked to write something about how I went on about making this one. Well, apart from the technicalities, I dont know what to tell you. I sat down while I was having a nightly snack, A5 sketchpad in hand, and I drew this thing. Then I took a picture of it, put it in the computer, deployed some Layer mask magic in gimp, slapped on a "Plasma" texture filter, darkened it, and woop. There you go. Writing tutorials is no fun when not a whole lot of people are interested anyway, so im not going to.

I used a regular ink pen, which is quite unlike me! I sorely feel that while I may be good at drawing with pencils, my technique is severely lacking when it comes to pen and markers, and its really something I should practise more often! Ive seen art drawn in markers (By people i know!) that just makes me want to burn all my wooden pencils, because all that ive been practising to do for all these years seems so trivial.




Heres the source work. The drawing is actually considerably smaller than youd expect. I can cover all of the drawing with a closed fist, its A6 size. If the screen youre using is about 100dpi (Thats about 1080p on a 22 inch screen.), then the first picture is more or less true to life size!

I uploaded the picture on facebook a couple days ago, and jesus christ, a third of all my friends liked it ._. Thats a pretty good number, yo. A reminder to me of how much I love you guys.


PS: Yeah, alright. I lied, Im not writing about FUN STUFF today. Maybe tomorrow, folks. I am depleted, tired. The only thing ive eaten all day is some leftover steak, and some microwaved pancakes, which just made me long for real pancakes more than anything else. Its a difficult life.

PPS: Yeah, Difficult. Hard is a colloquialism, and hard and difficult are not synonymous in writing. Hard just implies all the wrong things. Life isnt hard, its difficult! Next time you see someone write hard in place of difficult, go on, be a grammar nazi. Make me proud!

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Happy new year feat. YEARGIF

And a good one it was. Interesting, full of exploits, anecdotes, stories, stuff, things and a load of nice occurences. A year of new things, most of all. Like this blog, for example! In a couple months time, it will be the one year anniversary of this very blog! Woppey! Quite honestly, its been the best year of my life. Truly. I love you people. All of you, known and unknown.



So what now? 2013? And the first year of the 13th baktun... Whoah. Am I the only one seeing how this year could very well be the end of the world (Disclaimer; No, its not.)? You know, 13. Its an unlucky number, right? And things just seem to... Coincide, and in a very peculiar way. Weve got 2 Friday the 13ths this year, Sep 13, and one in december. These days will shock the world, mark my words. All the unlucky numbers align. If only there was a 13th month... We would be anally fucked a-la calendar this year.

What is all this superstition really about? There are 2 special sacred (Historical or fictional? YOU DECIDE) events connected to this number, and theyre very much alike.

In Christian belief, and according to the Bible, Judas Iscariot, the betrayer, was the 13th man to sit down at the table of the Last Supper. I hope thats all the Christian education ill have to do here...

Very interestingly, in Norse mythology (You know, Northern Europe, Thor and shit.) there was this similar dinner party. There were 12 members invited, but then Loke (Or Loki, whichever suits your translations.) showed up, bringing all the heat and shit, making for the 13th member of the party. He kinda killed some other god, and then there was this general sense of discord and chaos. Hence, 13 pretty much sucks, yeah?

Even more interestingly, both of these religious events are totally coherent with modern and ancient numerology! We know how theres alot of myths regarding numbers and such, right? Like, 7 is magical, 3 is too. 4 and 9 bode bad tidings. Well, this is not one of them. A dozen, which is 12, is, in mathemathical context, considered the perfect number. If we didnt use a system based on 10, we would use 12. It can be evenly divided by 2, 3, 4 and 6! Its perfect!

Here comes the unlucky part. Just as in the religious myths, when you add 1 to 12, shit happens. You get 13. Jesus dies, and Thors best friend is impaled on a stick. Its a called Prime number, its not evenly divisible by anything. Thats also why numerologists find this number so uncomfortable.

I think those are the most interesting stories behind the number. Theres also the 13 menstrual cycles in the average year, and some chinese wordplay, puberty, executional tradition, and such mildly interesting theories lurking about the number.



To summarize this great past year, I figured id cram a bit of every entry ive ever made into this. Heres the YEARGIF 2012!!! Oh, I feel so nostalgic. Writing a blog is awesome, even if almost no one reads it. I love it, as I love you. Yes, you, dear reader.








I hope the best of years to you!




PS. I wrote 13 exactly 13 times in this post. OH SHII-