bravo1102 wrote:
Wow 1992, will we be getting retro four-inch-thick lap tops with tiny screens? And Barney?

No. But I do predict a marked increase in interest for Looney Tunes, Space Jam, Fanny packs, obnoxious colour combinations, thick-rimmed glasses ( admittedly already somewhat popular due to hipsters ), Nickolodeon / kids game shows, Teenage mutant ninja turtles, transformers, power rangers, rounded-off, smooth design styles for everything, aggressive post-grunge and Seattle sound music but now with a hint of folk music thrown in, “Reality TV” being replaced by “Reality Gameshows” ( Topshot, The Amazing Race, Etc. ), a desire for larger vehicles as birthrates go up again ( Lotta 20-somethings been waiting on the economy for the last few years. ), Nostalgia in videogaming I expect to become quite common again, the return of the side-scroller, penny games like angry birds, arcade format games becoming more popular as an option for cell phone gaming, the development of story-based gaming, grinding in games, dance music will likely see a slight resurgence in Rave and techno hooks being used in hip hop, graffiti will become the new camo print as more and more designers try to appropriate “urban” themes, the next 8-12 demographic will be introduced to Star Wars, after a generation of millenials who missed the original trilogy, as their parents ( now in their late 20's and early 30's ) decide to introduce them to their childhood, design and style will see a resurgence of the 1970's ultramodern “new design phase” and everything will be simplified again, Disney will see their stock go through the roof like it did in the 70's and 90's, despite Pixar doing all the animation and them stealing the credit for it, Someone will create the next Toystoryand change the way we look at movies forever once again, the youth of America will become jaded and disappointed in their elders again, they will resign themselves to working jobs at gas stations, the elder crowd ( now panicking about social security again ) will not retire when they should, black, blue and grey will become prominent and desirable fashion colours again,

And most of all, not a bit of it will matter, because the world is going to keep on going.

Now come back in 10-15 years and tell me how much of that list is accurate. It's probably going to be pretty damn scary.

I predict a huge resurrgence in magnificent dramas with a whole crop of stuff for the cenntenial of the Great War none of which will be released in the USA. There's already been a huge ton of stuff for the Cenntennials of the Russo-Japanese War as well as the 60th anniversary of WWII in Europe none of which has made it across the oceans seperating America from anything worth watching on the big screen.
Considering the huge critical success of the Artist I have a feeling we'll be seeing heavily retro-dramas even silent films that'll eschew computer graphics for old-time model work to purposely look old-fashioned or worse yet CGI that purposely looks like old-time model work.
Star Wars will be made into a Broadway musical. You just know somebody is working on it in the depths of Lucasfilm somewhere.
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Meanwhile my digestion sucks. I have to clean up a bunch of rooms so the windows can be measured and have therefore totally destroyed my right arm from shoulder down to wrist. I have never felt such exquisite pain in all my years of feeling lots of physical pain. Then there's my fractured vertebrae from my elevator accident a couple of years back. It's a weird sensation of feeling like there's this little hole in your neckbone and that's what hurts. But then the weather in NJ has been jumping all over the map lately and I've really been feeling the April showers bit.

And you know what? I'm completely out of pages for the comic and the stuff coming up is so involved digitally that I have no idea where to begin in compositing the images. And I thought blue screening space battles would be so easy.

Funny, all the chatter about going retro.

I recently found a sweater I started about ten years ago. And so now I'm knitting again (although the sweater is for someone else now).

What's old is new again

WOW Hippievan sorry I'm so late on this but I'm from Ontario and sorry, totally missed health Canada on there… it had been a crazy week :P what province are you from? I try to avoid working directly with the government when I can… I think trying to work with Transport Canada back when I was in Aviation kinda spurned me. You learn of such delightful poorly thought out rules such as “You must only have this one specific kind of one time use life vest on an aircraft and you must test them once a year”…. wait… how do you test a one time use life vest??? and that wasn't even the worst part :P
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Anyways, I'm not gonna lie, I didn't handle my last semester well but I'm happy to say it's OVER! Just 3 more credits and I have a business degree… I don't know if I'm excited or terrified… Also I decided to take Java. At almost 1000 pages the text book is a little frightening but I'm finding it really interesting stuff… It's kind of like a mix between excel and HTML… I never was any good at HTML but excel I rocked at. I'm kind of curious as to what the upper limits of Java is because it seems pretty flexible even though it doesn't seem to make the prettiest programs from the examples….
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How is Star Trek Online? I have a lot of faith in Cryptic since playing Champions Online but never actually tried that one out. Always looked cool though

So I finally just went ahead and finished Mass Effect 3.
I'm not sure what people were complaining about…? The ending seemed fine to me, a little long, but no great issues. Maybe it was because I had all the download content already installed so it seemed better? I have no idea.

I suppose better end music would've improved things, the stuff they had was a bit of a downer, something more triumphant than the introspective sounds would've made people feel better at the end.

No great complaints. It's a very “final” end to a nice long series. Maybe a bit too final I suppose, but not awful.

So after a couple of weeks of things getting easier and generally looking to be on the up… it all comes to a grinding halt. I'm now at thatt horrible position when it feels as though everything is about to fall through my fingers and there's next to nothing I can do but hope for the best.

Well, FIU Law and Stetson University both denied my law school applications. Feh. If I was a drinker, I'd probably be drowning my sorrows in a bottle of Jack right now… both of those schools were my top choices. Oh well; time to stop moping and start applying elsewhere. I have a goal I'm working towards, and two rejection letters from my preferred schools aren't going to get in my way!

ozoneocean wrote:
So I finally just went ahead and finished Mass Effect 3.
I'm not sure what people were complaining about…?

I commented about that in the media thread.

Edit: Nevermind. I noticed that you already commented there.

My laptop has decided to start doing this obnoxious thing where it suddenly just starts scrolling down the page at random whenever it get humid out. Or at least I hope it's just because it's humid out today. It's almost guaranteed a result of the coca cola damage from a month ago, but it's not coming at a good time. I haven't had any work coming in for the last two months more or less and now is not the time for my laptop to start playing it's own version of the “cat on yer keyboard” game. Hell, if I wanted to be unproductive for another couple days, I'd go back to playing Team Fortress. That game has already sucked up enough of my life of late. It's rediculously addictive for something I've been playing since I was six.

@Genejoke- That's horrid! I hope things sort themselves out in a better rather than worse way ASAP!

@NickyP- try, try, try! Someone will have to let you in! Charm them with your voice ^_^

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YAY! I ordered something I've been wanting for a loooooong while last week and now it's here:
A British colonial pith helmet!
-The kind the horrible troopers of the British Raj wore in India. They're different from standard pith helmts in that they're pointy and very large, without the wide brim.

I fell in love with them when reading an old reference book years ago on the Raj. I's been hard to get one though because they're not the general pith helmet style… they're rather historically signifigant. However, with the rsing popularity of Steampunk they've become more widely available again! ^_^

Anyway, what I MOST loved about these helmets wasn't just the style itself, it was the turban like modification that British troops would decorate them with. I saw heaps of pics of it once (in a book) but can't find them now, Google is being a prick.

BAVO1102!
Please get me some pics of British troops in India or Afghanistan wearing the pointing pith helmets with the turban type thing on them.
Real black and white photos in preference over Osprey painted pics please. ^_^

The helmet in question is the Foreign Service Helmet. I did a google search and these are two images. The top one is from the 1880-1900 era and the bottom one is the real deal worn in 1879 by a lieutenant in the South Wales Borderers (24th Foot) from the Zulu wars. The wound thingee around the middle is called a puggaree which means turban. It could be unwound to make a neck cloth. But that was right sloppy and not to be borne by so many RSMs!

There has always been a steady supply of these helmets for fans of the movies Zulu and Zulu Dawn. Hundreds were made up for the movies and they're readily found among militaria merchants. I've found them at American Revolution reinactments right next to World War II SS camouflage tunics.

Here's a looser cover. This also shows why the puggaree was worn. Made the cover nice and tight like the rubber band issued with US helmet camouflage covers. THough initally issued in white troops often died the helmet covers in tea to make them that wonderful khaki color. Later on they were issued in that color along with the khaki tropical uniforms.

Since you said “without the wide brims” I assume this is what you meant as opposed to the later Wolseley Helmet worn in World War One as below.

Thanks for that!

But it's not quite the thing I wanted…
You see I had all these pics of British troops on patrol all over India and Afghanistan in the very late 1800s and instead of the proper style puggaree thing, individual troopers would often have these much more bulky things wrapped around the helmets, made out of a sort of patterned woven cloth. It looked like it would make the helmets a lot heavier.

The thing I liked about it was that it was one of those very individualised things soldiers might do, like US Vietnam era soldiers with cards and things on their helmet bands.
I just can't find any pics of it right now :(

AS I said in my post that wound turban thing was messy and not to borne by proper sergeants. It was an early field adaptation before the proper helmet shown in the top picture of the Lancashire Fusiliers at Spion Kop (1899). That lump under the khaki cover is the issue turban.

The one you're referring to is the individual modification made from local cloth in India and Afganistan to modify the original pre-khaki cover Foreign Service Helmet.

The above pretty thing that is hardly practical. They were dyed in tea and local cloth wound around to make a neck cloth. You won't find the images on the internet you'll have to go to Osprey. Since most reinactors do Anglo-Zulu or Anglo-Boer War the messy turbans won't be found easily as they weren't worn in those conflicts.

And to the rescue comes good old Bryan Fosten an artist featured in many Osprey titles. It's probably the white one you're referring to.
The above image is from the website for the Queen's Royal Surreys. here's the original caption:

19thCentury. Second Half.Top row: Shako 1846 (Albert), Shako 1855 other rank and officer, Shako 1861 (Quilted) other rank and officer. Second row: Shako 1868 other rank and officer, forage cap 1860, Linen covered cork or straw helmet 1857 (India). Bottom row: Foreign service helmet 1875 and 1890, Glengarry 1857, Field service cap (Austrian) 1895, Slouch hat 1900, Home service helmet 1879.

Damn!
Thanks for the info and the effort.
I'm pretty sure the book was published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson. I have another in the series about The Rajputs of Bikaner, but it's only about Indian royals mainly… the only pictures of Brits are people like King George V or misc British politicians- extremely formal. :(

Go to the queensroyalsurreys.org.uk. Lots of images there especially the Chinese War of 1860 with those big wound puggarees. (Toku forts)

Remember soldiers were always told to smarten up for the photographer and were probably a lot sloppier in person. :)

Still not quite it… but the theme is there. This was obviously patterned cloth that was so thickly wrapped and bulky that it went almost to the top of the helmet (not quite) and bulked out the top part so that the taper wasn't as evident. It was literally a turban… well almost. I WISH I still had that book. Grrr. :(
From the pics I had the impression that when they went out on patrol (groups of 5 or so) they did it to fit in better with the locals. It looked very cool.

Meanwhile, the global leaders of the New World Order of The Glorious 15th Hat Council are secretly controlling the world… As people with glorious emperor hats should!



(I think they're Orthodox Jewish people at a wedding in Kolpik hats, but this was too good to pass up)

Thanks for the Queens page anyway, there was a lot of great pics of the Afghan countryside from the 1800's JUST what I like for reference pics!
I looked through all their pics from the time period and couldn't find the hats I wanted, but the reference of the rocks and countryside is valuable anyway :)
Speaking of reference, while looking for those illusive hat variations, one of the things that came up was a site full of nekkid chicks.
“Ho-hum, that's the internet for you” you might say, but this was actually pretty decent. It turns out to be a pretty good reference site for the human figure:
http://www.nake.me/thumbnails.php?album=21#.T6O5i1AxNfA WARNING NOT SAFE FOR WORK, KIDS, OR THOSE OFFENDED BY NUDITY!

It's a great resource for sexy poses. Just simply a site about poses, not porn, which is usually VERY unhelpful when it comes to reference. SO far I've only seen nekkid women on there, no men, so the use is limited for those who want something more general.

So, I'm poking around on job boards looking for some new freelance gigs, and holy crap are there some awesome jobs available out there right now. Like awesome enough I'd almost consider giving up the freedom freelance life gives me for them. In half an hour, I found positions to illustrate the google logo for a living, a posting to develop graphics and photography for the National Guard's magazine ( ie; they send you all over the world ala National Geographic style ) and a listing for a "travelling photojournalist/graphic diarist, which is basically getting paid to travel and keep a comic blog of your travels for a travel magazine.
I take this as a serious sign the world's economy is getting better if a company is willing to pay someone to travel to wherever they feel like and draw a semi-daily comic strip of their experience. Somebody out there is going to get massively lucky when they land that job. Either that, or I'm just now noticing a significant increase in the world's awesome levels here.

@Macattack: I'm in Manitoba(aka At Least It's Not Saskatchewan).

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I got my hair cut for the first time in years today. Well, sort of. Really I just had it trimmed and got bangs. I had a really awkward moment with the hair dresser though, when she was showing me how to get my bangs to stay in place(I have crazy curlies around my face).
Her: “You know how Nicole Richie has that nice swoop?”
Me: “No…”
Her: “Oh…”

Then I spent several minutes trying to figure out who on earth that was.

“Bangs” hahaha, I didn't learn of that North American word for “fringe” until my late teens. It freaked me out. So weird and the connection to hair seems unintuitive… I suppose it could be the hair that “bangs” into the face?

Niccole Ritche is someone who I didn't know about for a long time either, but that's just because celeb and fake celeb (her) don't get onto my radar. She's some sort of adopted daughter of Lionel Ritche I think? Now HIM I know! -Dancing on the ceiling, Hello, Say you say me, All night long etc.

@lba- lucky man! Take one of those jobs! They sound so cool!

ozoneocean wrote: Thanks for the Queens page anyway, there was a lot of great pics of the Afghan countryside from the 1800's JUST what I like for reference pics!I looked through all their pics from the time period and couldn't find the hats I wanted, but the reference of the rocks and countryside is valuable anyway :)Speaking of reference, while looking for those illusive hat variations, one of the things that came up was a site full of nekkid chicks. “Ho-hum, that's the internet for you” you might say, but this was actually pretty decent. It turns out to be a pretty good reference site for the human figure:http://www.nake.me/thumbnails.php?album=21#.T6O5i1AxNfA WARNING NOT SAFE FOR WORK, KIDS, OR THOSE OFFENDED BY NUDITY! It's a great resource for sexy poses. Just simply a site about poses, not porn, which is usually VERY unhelpful when it comes to reference. SO far I've only seen nekkid women on there, no men, so the use is limited for those who want something more general.

That's actually really useful… I'm supposed to be animating a sex scene for a school project soon, having some reference material could come in handy. I wonder how some of the girls at my school would respond if I asked them…

I'm halfway contemplating the Google one. I like my freedom too much though, and I don't know how crazy they are about keeping the employees on a leash. It's at least something to keep in mind. For the moment, I'd rather stay freelance, despite all it's turbulence.

And Kroatz, the only type of girls who aren't going to kick you in the nuts for asking that are the kind you're going to want to approach wearing a hazmat suit. That's just a foregone conclusion there.

lba wrote: I'm halfway contemplating the Google one. I like my freedom too much though, and I don't know how crazy they are about keeping the employees on a leash. It's at least something to keep in mind. For the moment, I'd rather stay freelance, despite all it's turbulence.

And Kroatz, the only type of girls who aren't going to kick you in the nuts for asking that are the kind you're going to want to approach wearing a hazmat suit. That's just a foregone conclusion there.



That's some wise words there…
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I made a couple hundred euros today for doing two hours of design work. I sent in a basic idea, nothing but color and text and they immediately approved it, Now all I need to do is wait for the correct photos to be sent to me, paste those into the PSD and send the result back. Yay!

That's going to help me in creating a perfect Magic deck. Yay!

Felt a need to share this one.

Few hours ago, I was getting a chicken sandwich at a convenience store. While waiting, I noticed they had an assortment of aphrodisiacs by their tobacco section. Nothing special about that, 'cept one of them bore the image of M. Bison plowing Chun-Li from Streetfighter on the front label. No doubt Capcom approved. XD

LOL, it takes a special kind of moron to buy an aphrodisiac. Though there's always the placebo effect.
Chun-Li and M. Bison, hahahaha!
Well if it can get those two game sprites to go at it, anything's possible!

I am so mad. I told the hairdresser that I don't blow-dry my hair, so she gave me bangs which she said would be fine left to dry on their own. Of course, SHE blow-dried them to make them look nice. Two days later after I've washed my hair and let them dry I look completely ridiculous. There's a curl in my bangs that I can't get rid of that makes them look horrible.
This happens every freaking time I get my hair cut. “I want something low maintenance. I don't blow-dry my hair. I don't straighten my hair. I don't use product. etc. etc.” And every single time they do exactly that to make it look nice, so I have no idea what it will look like a couple days later. This has been the worst instance, though. Now I get to look stupid for months until they grow in again.

Friends who's hair you like- ask them what hair dresser they use.
The trick is to find a good one and stick with them.
That and hats.
Many of my lady friends just let the hairdresser do their thing and see how it turns out… The “trust the expert” approach, which is ok I suppose if you've got a great hairdresser (bad if they're crap), but the results are usually pretty impressive.

As a long haired fellow I used to obsess about all matters hairy… But I've since discovered that I'm happiest with my hair if I simply wash it and let it dry naturally, never bushing, combing or even touching it. It dries nice and curly and looks natural and unforced or fussed. ^_^
And I don't even bother looking in the mirror to style it anymore… just to make sure the part isn't too uneven. I have never been happier in my whole life with my hair than I am now. Giving up brushing and combing was the best thing I ever did.
(washing gets rid of the knots and tangles).

ozoneocean wrote:
Friends who's hair you like- ask them what hair dresser they use.
The trick is to find a good one and stick with them.
That and hats.
Many of my lady friends just let the hairdresser do their thing and see how it turns out… The “trust the expert” approach, which is ok I suppose if you've got a great hairdresser (bad if they're crap), but the results are usually pretty impressive.
As a long haired fellow I used to obsess about all matters hairy… But I've since discovered that I'm happiest with my hair if I simply wash it and let it dry naturally, never bushing, combing or even touching it. It dries nice and curly and looks natural and unforced or fussed. ^_^
And I don't even bother looking in the mirror to style it anymore… just to make sure the part isn't too uneven. I have never been happier in my whole life with my hair than I am now. Giving up brushing and combing was the best thing I ever did.
(washing gets rid of the knots and tangles).

The problem is, ozone, that most girls my age DO straighten, dye, blow-dry, curl, whatever every morning. My approach is similar to yours. I wash it and let it dry on its own, and I brush it in the morning. So asking my friends doesn't really make sense.
My haircut would be fine if I wanted to spend an hour styling it every morning.

Nearly happened to me again. Last night I was going to gas my car. I paid for something at the cashiers before going shopping elsewhere in the store when a tuner car pulls up and the driver takes the gas pump next to my car in an attempt to pump gas from it into his car. Except I didn't pay for my fuel at the cashiers yet… I actually paid a credit card bill (they have the service at some local stations now). I guess he thought I bought gas because after paying I left the cashier (which quite a few people tend to do). Too bad for him. Maybe next time he tries this he'll have his plates taken off first… stations got a lot of cams watching the pumps when the attendant isn't there.