Author Archives: Dragon Co. (Austin Smith)

Speak Your Mind 24 #116-120

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QUESTIONS

1. How many T.V.’s do you have in your house?

2. Do you share a bedroom?

3. Have you ever been to a professional football game?

4. Do you think people who live in other countries feel proud of their countries?

5. Have you ever gone inside a semi truck?

ANSWERS By: Austin Smith

1. 5 in working order, 4 being used, and 3 broken ones that have been painted.

2. I have never had to share a bedroom, but I have when I offered to.

3. No, not of either of the sports known as football.

4. As is the case with this country I’m sure there are people out there who are not proud of their countries. But is would be completely ridiculous of me to think that there is not at least a handful of people in every country that are proud of it, if not the majority of the population.

5. Yes, both the trailer and the cab.

Review – Prang 8 Water Color Set

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Ah, watercolor! It brings me back to the days when I sucked at art but loved it all the time. And it was so easy to get off your hands and clothes (and unfortunately the paper, too). Well it turns out that it is a legitimate art medium. But, are those fancy tubes really necessary? Can’t we just use the same old Prang tray that we used when we were kids?

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Well, you can, but they’re much harder to use. For starters they are completely solid, meaning that the water necessary to use them is much greater and the colors will still appear washed out on the paper. And of course there are the standard problems with working with water color to deal with.

 

The colors themselves are the standard bright, crayola-type colors that every “children’s” art supply set comes in. However, with them being water based paints they are much easier to blend and tone down than many other art supplies. Realism is still hard to achieve, though. The colors also have a tendency to be sticky and/ or runny, never quite balancing.

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The brushes are okay but definitely the worst part of the set, being cheap and imprecise. Better brushes or better yet foam pads are necessary.

All in all, I think getting better paints would be a necessity for any serious work as the paints are hard to work with. At the least better brushes. But they are serviceable paints and will get the job done in most cases and in the hands of an experienced painter, nearly all cases.

What Makes a Post Freshly Press-able: WordPress is Self-centered (Occupy wall street, election, cats, babies, space, etc…)

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Every day nineteen or so people appear on the front page of wordpress.com. This is the freshly pressed section that is the first thing seen by all who enter wordpress. Regardless or whether or not the posts are freshly pressed they are there, and many people wonder why those who end up there do. It seems like it has something to do with the ideas expressed in the post or the relevance of said post to current events. But lately there has been one or two freshly pressed posts about wordpress itself and mainly how to get freshly pressed.

I can understand how one or two can be relevant, even in sequence, but for over a month having a post about yourself on the front page is pushing it. I would understand if wordpress was mainly about itself, but it isn’t. My impression was that the freshly-pressed section was to highlight some of the better blogs out there (or at least the better posts). WordPress is about the community, and when the site keeps highlighting itself it just comes off as self centered.

I mean really wordpress, what about all those other bloggers out there, like me? Why can’t we (I) be on the front page? I mean I do great stuff, and none of it is ever appreciated. Just because you created and maintain the best blogging service and software on the web doesn’t mean you can be selfish about it. Just because you facilitate my ability (read: addiction) to Blog you think you can just promote yourself over me.

And what about what info I can consume? I could be reading about the “occupy …” protesters I don’t like, or the upcoming presidential election I hate everybody in, or someone’s post about their cat, or babies, or about wasting resources looking at and landing in space, but no, I can only read about wordpress. WordPress, wordpress, wordpress. Shame on you wordpress!  Didn’t your mother teach you about humility?

Speak Your Mind 23 #111-115

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QUESTIONS
1. How do you think life would be different if you lived in the north pole?

2. Do you think it is safe to ride in the back of a truck?

3. Didi you watch Sesame Street when you were little?

4. Do you have one or two pillows on your bed?

5. Have you ever had a broken bone?

ANSWERS By: Austin Smith

1. It would be quite a lot colder, and involve more starving I think.

2. Depends where you are and who is driving, but as a general rule, no. Unless it’s some type of transport truck like a semi or a military truck then yes.

3. Very little unfortunately. But I had the discovery channel and toy soldiers.

4. I have one pillow, I have two to. So I have two.

5. No, I have not once broken a bone in my body.