The latest edition of Draw! magazine has come out and it contains a rather inspiring article about the "Power of Sketching." This article has reminded me (as I have been reminded before) that a huge part of the joy of drawing is the freedom to just throw things down on paper and watch things unfold before your eyes.

It may sound strange, but one of my biggest problems with drawing so far is my fear of the blank page. All artists know this fear, and it does sound silly, but somehow there is this overwhelming pressure to draw something great each time you put pencil to paper, and that pressure can really mess with your mind. Of course, everyone says that to remedy this situation you have to just draw like crazy, forget about good vs bad drawings, and just focus on having fun and being inspired.

The Goal: Fill 1 entire sketchbook per month starting Dec 01, 2003. I have been extremely poor at filling my sketchbook and thus I am looking forward to this challenge. Besides, its always good to have a variety of simple goals in front of you.

Felt a bit like talking.

I swear that times like this come like clockwork, at least for me they do. What times? well, it's pretty simple really, times where I feel compelled to apply the question "why?" to everything I do and don't do. weird i guess, maybe not. But these are good times to talk and try and get things out of my mind and off my chest so that I can *try* to feel normal again.

I really don't have anything to complain about ... I still have a job, although it was touch and go for a little while, and everything is going well at the house. Drawing class has been a bit of a drag lately, but oh well. Anyways, things are pretty normal, yet I seem to have happened upon a bit of confusion, which is always tough. I'm not sure why it's happened, maybe just bored with the daily grind, but I seem to have lost any and all enthusiasm for life these days. And of course to make it worse I feel as if I have seen more totally idiotic things happen these past weeks than I have all year, and I don't deal well with people being stupid.

well ... i feel surprisingly better now. peace.

I have been eagerly anticipating the windows version of iTunes all year. Finally it came, and i am totally disappointed. A big part of the problem is that i use linux, which *shouldn't* be a problem except that everyone is still trying to control us through proprietary software. I guess i shouldn't say i am disappointed in iTunes per say, but i am disappointed that i can't download from their music store and make any use of what i download. i can't share the files with my roommates. i can't use the files on my primary linux box. and for only a few dollars cheaper than a cd, with worse quality than a cd, i just don't see this as being worth it yet.

Despite my disappointment this process did spark enough excitement about my iPod to actually look around for some more iPod tools. From that search i came accross myPod ... a java based gui for accessing your iPod, and assuming it works well i plan to use it for my music needs now.

I also realized that i no longer want to use winamp/xmms anymore either. I am excited about the ability to have 1 application, myPod, which can manage and play all my music, interact with my iPod, and also support the syncing of vCard contacts & iPod notes. Essentially i just don't want all these damn applications anymore. Who the fuck wants a different application for web, email, calendar, contacts, notes, music, ipod, etc. I am pretty damn happy with the fact that i get web, email, calendar, contacts, and notes all via the web with yahoo. With a little help so that i could sync that stuff to my iPod then i would be in heaven. Now i just want the same thing for managing my music. I don't want xmms, gtkpod, a rip prog, a tagging prog, a burning prog ... bleh.

Anyways ... enough blabbering. What i am getting at is this ... we need consolidation and simplification. Too bad hardly anybody else gets it.