Continuing on with my "Animal Antics" series, here's "Doggerel Writer" 🙂

I'm happier with this one than I was with the previous paintings since I see fewer issues, but I still feel there's room for improvement.

#Art #Painting #AnimalAntics
A painting of a furry dog stand…

To go along with the previous painting titled "Mouseketeer", I've created a new one called "Catechist" 🙂

In fact, I'm thinking of doing a whole series of these ... Will I get there? Or will my Apple Pencil break? Tune in next time to find out 😛

#Art #Painting #AnimalAntics
A painting of a tall building w…

@gaveen I've been wondering when Season 2 will arrive. New seasons seem to take longer and longer these days 😕

I've been slowly building an ecosystem of apps - an issue tracker for bugs and things to do, an app to send new app builds to my android/iOS devices like AirDrop (for Android) which auto installs apps, an ebook reader which actually works etc.

Today, I had it all work together beautifylly. As Hannibal would say, I love it when a plan comes togethe 🙂

Now I can put aside the coding (mostly) and work on my art 🙂

#Planning #Dev #Art

@Rosettatresh That's exactly who I was thinking of 🙂I seem to have a recollection of Reepicheep from "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" holding that kind of pose ... though I don't think he wore a feathered hat.

This is an image which has been rattling around in my head for a few days now. I call it "Mouseketeer" 😛

#Art #Ideas #Painting
A painting of a mouse wearing a…

An icon for an app that I'm trying out. Not quite sure if it works or not, but the first bit of drawing I've done in a fair bit ...

#Art #Icon #Ideas
An image with a yellow backgrou…

@ottawasteph Umm ... #StrangerThings was created by the Duffer Brothers and as far as I know, they are not from Canada?

Created a simple, lightweight, and easy to install/deploy issue tracker yesterday for our presonal use. We like it so much that I've decided to release it as an open source project:
https://github.com/FahimF/Buggy

Let me know if you've any feedback 🙂

#OpenSource #BugTracking #IssueTracking
A web-based bug tracker showing…

Started the year by creating a quick and lightweight bug tracker 🙂 Been using multiple solutions, but none of them really worked for us. This one is customized to meet our particular requirements.

Within an hour of creating it, the wife has already added a bunch of projects - and that's not even half of the projects that I work on for our personal use 😛

#Tools #Development #Web
A web-based bug tracker showing…

@MakeAppPie It's possible that some people don't need the "why", or don't care 🙂But I definitely appreciate knowing the "why" because, for me, a "why" means that it's a principle that I can remember.

A "how" (again to me) is just something that I can do for that particular artwork, but it doesn't stick in my mind since (to me) it's just a way to do something for that particular artwork. It doesn't always translate (again in my mind) into something I can use in other artwork ...

I'm trying to think of a good example here. Ran into a very good one just the other day comparing two different courses but can't remember now. Old age 😛

I think it might have been setting up shadow and light for an object. The first course simply said "Do this" and showed setting blend mode to "multiply" and putting a darker colour on that layer to add shadowing. But they didn't explain what multiply did or why that produced shadowing. So all I knew was that I had to select a particular colour, set a particular blend mode and that was it.

Maybe that works for most people? It just doesn't for me 🙂

The other course explained blend modes and mentioned that particular blend modes will turn colours darker and others will make it lighter and how generally anything above "normal" is darker and below is lighter. That stayed with me and made much more sense.

I've been checking out art courses online and it's interesting how many great artists don't realize that showing "how" to do something isn't the best way to teach 🙂

You need to teach people "why" - that allows you to re-use the principle in other ways, not learn by rote.

#Learning #Art #Teaching

@paulk I have a self-published humorous science fiction book that I'd like to offer for consideration 🙂

Title: Sir Lanka Files
Link: https://books.farook.org/sir-lanka-files/

"Now You See Me: Now You Don't" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4712810/) was disappointing.

It telegraphed what was coming way too early - if you didn't foresee the major reveal at the end way before you got there, you weren't paying attention 😛 (And I don't blame you for not paying attention ... it wasn't that interesting.)

And the sequence in the middle with them trying to outdo each other doing tricks? Annoying! And pointless.

#Movies #English

"The Running Man" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14107334) seems hyper-violent (like a lot of stuff these days) but on the other hand, it managed to keep my attention to the end. So probably one of the better action movies in the past couple of years?

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14107334

#Movies #English #Action #SciFi

"Aaromaley" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt36587142) had a slightly slow start but it picks up quickly and really comes in to its own after the interval. It's a beautiful movie about people, relationships, and feelings. And to suddenly hear SPB singing "Anjali" - a feeling all in its own category ...

A beautiful, emotional, and heart-warming romance that's well worth watching.

#Movies #Tamil #Romance

I've been coding a web-based library interface to complement my book reading app.

The library simply shows our books and allows the wife and I to have separate user profiles showing the books we're reading, our reading history, and comments.

Working pretty good.

#Reading #Books #Coding #Library
A web-based library interface s…
A web-based user profile with t…

I keep hearing how Firebase has "generous" usage on the free plan. I started working on a library app with 4000+ books. Two data syncs and I was through my free plan 😛

Switched over to a local server with SQLite immediately. Might look at Parse again maybe?

#Coding #Platforms

@mdreid Yep, Matt writes a compelling story and he expands the world brilliantly in the first book. I really want to see what happens on the next level ...

But then again, I've got a couple of more writers to go through to see if I find more interesting writers who make me want to write 🙂

So moving on without going on to book 2 ... but that's mostly because I read slowly and I'm currently on a quest to find more inspiring writers. But the compulsion to move on to book 2 is very strong 😀

What with the storm and flooding in Sri Lanka and other stuff going on, I haven't had time to do a reading update. But maybe time to do one now to close out November?

After DNFing "Just One Damned Thing After Another", I started on "Clean Sweep". This one I liked 🙂

The story was engaging, and the writing was clean. It wasn't the kind of writing that made me want to write like that, but the story was good. And I finished the book in 4 days, which is a record for me ... Or I wasn't busy 😛

I'll be returning to this series!

Then I read "Dungeon Crawler Carl".

I knew Matt Dinniman a long time ago (before DCC) and he's a great guy. The book was interesting.

What interests me mostly about a book is the plot. Figuring out what will happen before it happens.

Couldn't do that much here 😛

For one thing, you know what will happen ultimately based on the premise - you know that Carl will make it to the end of the dungeon 🙂

For another, the plot points are like mini-stories. Each section of a level takes a chapter or two and is done. There are very few overarching plot elements which act as hooks. The main attraction is to keep reading to see what happens next.

But the plot twists as he progressed were entertaining and creative. So I kept reading, and reading, and reading.

Again, not quite the kind of thing I'd want to write myself, but definitely something that will keep me reading!

I'll be coming back to this series. Both Ilona Andrews and Matt make me want to come back and finish the whole series. But there are so many books ....

#Reading #Books #MiniReviews
A screenshot from a reading app…