Sat Jul 2 07:49:32 EDT 2016 Slept from eleven to seven-thirty without waking. Cloudy this morning. Sunny in the afternoon. High of eighty. Goals: - Drawing exercises http://drawabox.com/lesson/1 Drawing is not writing. Draw mainly by moving the should, not the wrist or fingers. Draw from the wrist only for small details. Drawing with the shoulder keeps lines smooth rather than choppy/sketchy. Exercise 1: - Lock your wrist. Draw only with the shoulder. 1. Draw a longish line with a straight edge. 2. Draw freehand over the line eight times. Another exercise: - As above, but with arcs or wavy lines. Pace is important in this exercise. Too show, and the lines will be jerky; too fast, and they won't conform to the original line. Exercise 2: - Lock your wrist. Draw only with the shoulder. 1. Draw two points on a page. 2. Hovering the tip of the pen above the page, make several "ghost" lines until the action feels comfortable. Rotate the page if necessary. 3. Draw the line for real. Exercise 3: 1. Draw four dots on a page 2. Connect the dots with six straight lines, so we have a plane/box with an "X". 3. Draw two more lines terminating at the middle of each side, so the "X" becomes a "*". - Some D&D thing or read more of Maze - What's the best page size to publish? - ANSI A/Letter or A4 Pros: - Room for wide tables - Ease of printing, wide availability; no cutting or folding required Cons: - 2+ columns required for comfortable line length - More bulky at the table or in a backpack - Multi-column layout needs to be split broken and resumed for wider tables - Half Letter/ or A5 Pros: - One column is a comfortable line length. - Takes up less room at the table and in the backpack. Cons: - Paper must be cut or folded, unless user is content with 2-up. - Difficultly of accommodating wide tables (Is there a way to do a wide figure as a two-page spread in LaTeX?) The more I think about it, the more I like landscape Letter, like I used for Torch & Sword. It can be bound on the long or short edge. It allows for very wide tables. With coil binding, it's nice to be able to fold it over in half. In a two-column layout, the columns are wide enough to accommodate most tables, therefore minimizing having to leave and re-enter multi-cols. - Natural/real animals in D&D - Natural animals are boring - It isn't cool to hurt animals - Animals are metal - Historical handling of animals - Making boring animal somewhat suitable as monstrous D&D adversaries can teach us about making non-natural/real monsters better adversaries Watched The Rite on Netflix. It was OK. I just wanted to see more of Anthony Hopkins. And coincidentally this article popped up in my feed reader this evening: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/01/as-a-psychiatrist-i-diagnose-mental-illness-and-sometimes-demonic-possession/ Never felt the need to turn on the air conditioning today. Nice. Breakfast: left-over pizza Lunch: mac and cheese Dinner: Jimmy Johns