365: Sky 11 - unreal SL skies

This might be cheating, but here are some skies from SL that I captured in my wanderings. None of them was captured today. I might still do that. In which case, there will be two postings for today. Gosh.

Sunset in Promissa over 2000 Meters

Moonrise in Promissa over 2000 Meters

Moonrise over Promissa with flip flop banner

Inspire Space Park, Shinda - Planetary Horizon

365: Sky 10 - simple night

Traditional night sky

365: Sky 9 - another night

The haze and fog do increase render times but it was the ground in this scene that was the culprit. Once I changed the ground plane to a simpler mud texture render time shortened. Then I increased the quality and it went up again. But I don't see a perceptible difference in quality.

Current Fads
Listening. Love the One You're With Eagles and A Pleasant Sadness (unpublished iTune playlist); dog crunching food
Watching. Bridget Jones's Diary (2001)
Activity. getting ready for Script Frezy
Gadget. iPhone 3GS
News Source. the news feeds in Safari
Reading. The Passionate Accurate Story - Carol Bly; The Soul Code - James Hillman; Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House - M. C. Beaton
Writing. nonsense

365: Sky 8 - strange night 2

This is yesterday's sky with less haze and fog and the colors of shadows and sky changed. I also changed the camera direction 180 degrees. I hoped these changes would reduce the render time. And they did. This sky took one and half hours to render (instead of yesterday's nearly three). But why? Much of the render time was spent calculating and rendering stuff that can't be seen. Oh, well. Pretty, though.

365: SKy 7 - strange night

This started off as a Bryce preset sky and then I modified it a bit and added a ground plane. Took nearly three hours to render. What's rendering? Perhaps tomorrow.

365: Sky 6 - Illustrated sky

I accidentally made this widescreen so it makes a good desktop. Feel free!

365: Sky 5 - Modified Desert

Memory of the desert

The Bryce preset desert sky is too dark and looks more like a sand storm than a desert sky. As I remember the skies from Saudi Arabia, they are bright blue and rarely have clouds. So, I made the sky bluer and increased the frequency of the clouds. It still looks a bit like a sand storm.

365: Sky 4 - pre-April Rains

After the rain.

Grunge desktop - free

Have a free desktop until I get the sky of the day posted.

365: Sky 3 - beige gold

I was so thrilled about having posted for two days that I totally forgot about posting today. I kept reminding myself and forgetting. So here's a standard Bryce sky with the chrome planet from Sky 1.

365: Sky 2 - Equinox plus two

Sky 2 - halfway into the light half of the year

365: Sky 1 - wistfully purple pink

Here's the start of my new 365 Project: A Sky a Day. I plan to make these in Bryce and will also post photos, if they happen.

This started off as a standard sky. I modified the haze and fog.

0321 - Retrospective: Sky

Spring Moon (3/21/09)

This might be a better post for "The Unplanned Eye" but it's really part of my daily retrospective. Although the project seems dead, it's still having an effect on my creativity.

In addition to the immediate benefits of my failed "365 Make Something" project, I've been experiencing a strange revival in my art marketing. I suddenly found myself renting a wall at Art Works and hanging my art (Wall "N", beside the exit/entrance to the cafe). Another spur-of-the-moment thing was submitting work to the monthly juried All Media Show. I happened to have a spare frame and a couple of works that just needed printing. And I'm making a Facebook artist page.

Today I'm working in Bryce, realizing that posting a sky a day would be possible. Especially if I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. Generating a random sky would be acceptable because it would be all about choice – choosing the best sky of the day. I suppose I could also post a photo. Especially in the spring there are some great sunrise skies. In the winter it's sunset skies. So, something to think about.

Believing the Grass is Green Now

Crocus, early spring

In the coffee shop, the man across the table made a couple of phone calls explaining he was drunk and needed detox. He said he was a week behind on his rent. He said he would walk in. He said he was located three miles from where we were sitting.

I got up to leave. He said, "I've got a situation here."

I said, "We all have situations."

He said, "I'm about to fix it."

I smiled and said, "Good luck with the fix," and left.

All addicts think that everyone else has a perfect life and they are the only ones to fail. This is an illusion we all share, to some extent. Everyone thinks the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. It's not.

Everyone has an extraordinary life. Everyone has problems and situations. We spend all of our time "fixing" things to make them right, or quiet, or peaceful, or better, or whatever.

The fact is we live in a river of events. There is always at least one situation to fix, usually more. There is no escape. There is no fix.

There is only the way, the path, fate, a higher power, faith, or whatever spirit brings you assistance. Some times it's harder than others to keep that belief, to go on. This doesn't mean believing is wrong or that we haven't got enough belief. It only means that things are really, really difficult at this moment.

And, as we know, this too will pass.