Chronicles: 2017 Winter

Academic

  • I turned in my dissertation! I’m officially a PhD!
  • Still focusing on job interviews. Taking it slowly, as I’m trying to sync up with my partner’s academic job search as well, but I’m trying to get my foot in the door on opportunities before others are hired onto interesting projects and teams. It’s a bit hard getting the timing right…
  • Presented two projects at CSCW in Portland: Mosaic, and Mechanical Novel. I was immensely surprised at how well these projects were received and had a rad time talking to people about their thoughts in this research area.
  • I moved Mosaic off of Heroku to a proper HTTPS-only server, so now it loads in less than a few seconds! 😛 You can find Mosaic at http://myartprocess.com. (Uh… how’s that for SEO?)
  • Served on a Papers Committee for the first time, for Creativity and Cognition 2017! I was a bit nervous about rounding up good reviewers (and hounding them to do reviews), but it wasn’t too bad! 😛
  • Took a class on iOS development for fun! Swift is actually pretty fun to code in. I just wish iOS had more of a SQL-like model for handling data storage, but maybe I’m just not used to Core Data yet.

Art

  • Finally put together incomplete, a digital charity zine showing how different artists work on their art process! Through a pay-what-you-want set of sales, we were able to raise $92 for Artists for Humanity!
  • I got a table at San Japan for 2017! So many out-of-state cons this year.
  • No new Herogirl chapter. I’d like to take some time to try out making a full draft of the comic before making final pages and seeing if that helps with my storytelling. So, I’m taking a break and doing a bunch of filler comics for a while.
  • Successfully did a comic for Hourly Comics Day 2017!
  • Did a good number of commissions and Christmas gifts and birthday gifts!
  • I’ve also been trying to do smaller, messier sketches more often. I need to get in the mindset of quantity over quantity. These “sketches” still take about 2 hours each 😛
  • Speaking of doing art really slow, I spent this whole quarter working on an original print! It’s a weird experiment with pixel art + painting… it’ll be interesting to see how it does at cons!
  • I now have 2000+ followers on Tumblr! Pretty cool!

Personal

  • Still doing daily journaling in my Hobonichi Techo! I got some Midliner highlighters for Christmas which have made making colorful journal pages very easy and fun. Also, I’ve realized I now have a reason to buy stickers and washi tape at anime cons! Bring on the stationery!
  • Travel: Went back to Washington for Christmas! Not much to report there — just chill time with friends and family. I did go hiking with my parents. And my dad did something embarrassing.
    • Went to Portland for CSCW! The conference reception was at the friggin’ Portland Art Museum! They had a live band playing, and the museum was open just for us conference goers. To top it off, the ending plenary was by Jorge Cham of PhD Comics fame — it was engaging, funny, and it was cool to learn about what he does outside of comics (namely, science education outreach).
    • It was weird knowing my childhood home was nearby but that someone else lives there now. I missed riding the MAX. I missed the airport carpet. I was surprised at how popular Blue Star Donuts has gotten. I got to check out some cool restaurants (Tasty n Alder, Apizza Scholls, and Farm Spirit).
  • Anime: Maidragon (so good!), Digimon Tri Loss (many mixed feelings), Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Parts 1 – 4 (loved it), RWBY Volume 4 (fun but want more story!), Pokemon XY(Z) (the character development and writing is surprisingly good?)
    • Tried: Gabriel Dropout (meh), Masamune-kun’s Revenge (cringey, and all the characters are jerks?), Scum’s Wish (hard to watch)
    • Also tried Terrace House on Netflix! I’m always wary about reality TV because I can’t handle watching frustrating conflict, but it actually started out kinda sweet and interesting! But I let my guard down: soon the show rotated in new people, and the fighting started. Noooo thanks.
  • Games: Continuing to play Granblue Fantasy and Final Fantasy Record Keeper, all the while questioning whether I should be keeping up with it. Finished the story quests for FFXIV Heavensward and survived the credits reel. Can’t wait for Stormblood! Played my first horror game (INSIDE) with a friend, and it was actually really fun and very well-designed. Ran another D&D session — I think I’m getting the hang of it!
  • Books: Slowly getting through Encyclopaedia Eorzea! Started reading Improv Wisdom. Each chapter is bite-sized, and I’m enjoying using each chapter as material for my daily journal entries.
  • Podcasts: Started listening to NPR Politics! I’m trying to be more politically active by calling and writing to my state representatives about what’s important to me and staying informed about what’s going on and potential consequences of whatever is happening.

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