narshada

I've become something of a lurker of late. It's mostly due to being busy. Having moved into the main office at work, (which I don't really like - it's too noisy and I have to listen to everyone else's music and endless bickering... I miss my private office.) obviously I can't really go on SG at work any more as plenty of people can see my screen and it only takes one of them to tell my boss for me to get in trouble and there are quite a few people there that are petty enough to do it. Usually it's the ones who busy themselves on Facebook or sending texts/taking personal calls all day. Maybe it's projection, or maybe they're just cunts with no sense of honour or decency - who knows? I'm not going to spend much time thinking about it.

Besides work time, a lot of my time has been taken up with doing stuff in Potatoshop for SG sets:

On the rocksby the lovely
Mistress Paine.

The good, the bad and the naked
Savage, Machiko and
Miyo multiset.

Both of which went up for member review on the same day it seems and have both got good feedback from what I read. I'm pretty proud of my part in them.

It's funny, but the job of the photoshopper is pretty much not to be noticed - your work is vital to the look of the set - you can change lighting or colour, amongst many other things, and therefore contribute a lot to the 'feel' of the set, but if what you've done stands out, you haven't done your job properly.
Of course, there are exceptions, like Savage's set, where they need special effects etc.
For anyone that's interested, I created the fire and smoke effects in 3DS Max using bog standard particles, then lots of layers in Photoshop. The cartoony look of Miyo and Machiko at the beginning of the set was done with smart blur and blending modes.
</geek info>

Anyway, I'm thinking of applying to become a staff potatoshopper. Having done two sets will hopefully stand me in good stead. Anyone who is one or knows about being one - a pm with any info you have would be much appreciated.
Any SG's or hopefuls who would like some work done could PM me too - but please be aware that I do this in my spare time, so it might take me longer than a staffer.

In other news, I lost my phone, so I rang up and got it barred. They said they'd send a replacement as I was insured. Cool. Then I rang to cancel my contract because they didn't have the phone I wanted as an upgrade - or rather, they had the old version but wanted 130 to upgrade.
They ended up offering me the phone I wanted for free, along with 100 extra minutes a month for 5 less than I'm currently paying. Sweet.

I now own one of these:

and I don't think I could be any more impressed with it. Wi-fi, so I can browse the web from anywhere with wi-fi, a 5mp camera (!) with a carl zeiss lens, which takes excellent photos, (although they've removed the lens cover that the silver version had - I don't get why...) n-gage games, (I remember seeing the N-gage demo'd when I worked at 02. I was very excited but it turned out to be a bit poo.) 8 gig of space for music etc, a mahoosive screen for viewing movies and pics which if you tilt it, the screen auto-rotates, (it's a little thing but it makes me smile,) it accepts normal headphones and the remote has volume, play/pause, skip forward/back and stop buttons.
All this and all the normal features we've come to expect from phones - text messaging, mms, calendar, contacts... oh and it makes and receives calls too!

So, in the end, I found my old phone at work, (which will get recycled for charity, ) got a brand new replacement of my old one sent out, (which will go on ebay unless anyone here wants to make me an offer - it's a sony ericcsson W850i with a 1 gig memory card - brand new, never been used.) and my lovely N95. I think I did pretty well there.

Wednesday Pinklet and I are going to look at places to live. It's all rather exciting.