You may have seen a couple of them already, but the last few of weeks, I have been spending my free minutes making my own tee shirts. I'm basically using the typical stencil method, but until recently I didn't know about using Spray Mount to get the stencils sticking to the shirt and I use acrylic paint rolled on with a sponge brush and not spray. I have also been printing on clear transparency sheets ...

If you use Keynote as much as I do and still haven't tried out Apple's Keynote Remote for the iPhone, you're missing out on a pretty decent control interface. Even with the $0.99 price tag (one might think buying a copy of iWork at $79 would be enough to warrant a free companion app), it is worth downloading and giving it a test run. I do have a couple of notes, though.

I lay in the silence and the dark,
wishing I could hold you,
near and close to my heart.

I think upon what it is I will dream,
hoping you are found there,
led by dimming moonbeam.

As night falls and spills into my eyes,
I breathe thoughts of you,
still-ing mind's fretful ties.

Before morning breaks and I see day's reveal,
I embrace sweet memory,
yet continually long for the real.

You are with me and I am with you.
We are but one,
separate, connected, in love, ...

On Sunday, Jodie and I had a great time celebrating our 7 year anniversary. It was technically a day early, but that was only because my current Full Sail teaching schedule has me coming home pretty late/early (depends on how you look at it).

We enjoyed our traditional meal at the Cheesecake Factory and a late showing of Disney/Pixar's amazing UP, sharing memories, laughs and a few tears.

We quoted movies, talked about friends and all that ...

On Saturday Jodie got a chance to cut my hair, so I am back to the mohawk goodness. I do think I look a bit like a Muppet character in the reflection, but I happen to like how all the stippling turned out.

Since we were joking about it during an iChat conversation, I was going to draw Jen getting pushed off her balcony by Courtney because Courtney and I were hungry and Jen wouldn't let ...

It is Jessica's idea, but this is what I drew up for Margie's birthday. I did an initial version, then worked ye ol tracing paper overlay magic to clean it up before a proper scan.
I still don't know where the quote is from, but I like it: "One by one, the penguins slowly steal my sanity".

While I was in Building 2 at Full Sail today, waiting for IT to install the complete Adobe Web Premium Collection on my MBP, I had a chance to submit an entry for this week's Illustration Friday:http://illustrationfriday.com theme of "idle".

If my ears look big, I'm going to blame it on the fact that I haven't draw dailies in a while and not on the possible fact that they are big ;)

The overall scan is pretty ...

Rocky Ricardo from Oscar Cortez on Vimeo.

Here is another piece done in the wonderful Brushes iPhone app, on the way to Cocoa Beach. I didn't have any specific inspiration for it, but did think about that scripture in Mark:

The Parable of the Sower
Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all ...

After fiddling with some older older backups, a couple attempts to install from a Mac OS 9 CD and trying to extract files from the "Classic" emulation app, I finally realized that I could get my hands on the original "Platinum Sounds" Apple soundset from Courtney's older IBook G4.

Of course, it was mainly so that I could use them in conjunction with the great Xounds APE haxie from Unsanity ... there is just something ...

The longer Twitter continues without a solid business model, the less trusting I become in the stability of their social system and in the safe-keeping of all those tweets I have spent so much time in writing. In fact, I think a problem that is going to surface very soon (once more people become aware of it) is that Twitter only keeps your last 3,200 tweets ... a seemingly big number, but one that ...

Stephanie and Colby told me they buy toilet paper in bulk, but maybe I misunderstood them ...

I have been get a crazy ton of things done at work today. Managed to resolve the "double contacts" issue I was seeing on my iPhone after the 3.0 upgrade, thanks in great part to this helpful article. I also used Terminal to enable the old skool but nifty "hot corner" indicators for a machine at work ... making it plenty easier to remember which corner of the display will start the screen saver.

Then I ...

Apple just released the newest installment of iPhone software sweetness ... Three dot O! If you haven't already, head over the iPhone website or open up iTunes and get it. During the install my phone needed a quick restore, so I had to learn how to put it in recovery mode ... good to know, for sure.

Also, since I always forget, here is a link on how remove the photo-blue lines from a digital scan. ...

As of late, I have found myself lacking focus … where normally I would be proud to be among the American populace that can successfully multi-task and achieve much in limited moments and timeframes, right now I relate much more to Tolkien’s disheartened Bilbo Baggins:”… I know I don’t look it, but I’m beginning to feel it in my heart. I feel… thin. Sort of stretched, like… butter scraped over too much bread.”Thus … the ...

With moneys being nice and tight right now, Jo and I have been taking real advantage of the idea of leftovers … tonight I had some fun with the remaining pot roast.Ingriedients:Chopped pot roast beef, carrots and potato leftoversSliced onionsGrilled zuchinni leftoversCan of sliced mushrooms (not sure where those came from)Chili PowderGround pepperSkyline Chili Sauce (gift from Jim and Sandy)Fresh honey (ours came with a nice basket of pears, but you can use whatever you ...

The last 48-72 hours (and I am sure many more to come) have been entirely consumed with the fact that Jodie and I are now parents to cute little baby Maximillian. He is still in NICU at Florida Hospital and will be for a while, but you can keep up with all the details here:http://www.drastudio.com/babymax

Just like all of the FCC kids that are working hard this week on finals and the last few assignments before the summer and/or graduation, I have been hard at work on freelance and Full Sail class projects. More updates to come soon, I promise ;)P.S. Shout out to Tyler for passing the Bible Comp. What what!

I am up early this morning, waiting for a friend to call so I can help him and his wife move into their new apartment, and for some reason my mind has stepped back about 20 years to fill my head with days past (along with the usual mix of oddities rolling around in there). From those thoughts and the occurrences of the past few days, I am stumbling upon a few collected ruminations that ...

Tuesday was a really easy-going, since our DFP (Deployment of Flash Projects) students had already finished their work and were just presenting their projects. We discussed some of the cool things that the Happy Cog guys are doing with the Redesign Mozilla.org campaign and how important it is to not only be able to defend design choices, but also be able to offer an intelligent and informed exposition on them.After the students presented their projects, ...

Monday was so full of work that most of the details are pretty fuzzy. The one thing I do remember is the wonderfully light and clear-headed feeling I had all day. It may have been related to something else, but I am giving full attribution to the fact that I only had a granola bar, an gala apple and lots of water all day. Every movement feel determined and every problem seemed to find ...

The worship service was fantastic this Sunday at Southside … uplifting and so beneficial in strengthening my resolve. Of the many points in Ron’s sermon, two stood out to me:1. The reason we find our prayer lives inadequate, is because we live cluttered lives and cannot hear God.2. To understand your circumstances, good or bad, God’s perspective is vital.After church Jodie, Courtney, Miriam and I enjoyed a super cheap and super delicious lunch of pizza ...

Here’s a little Illustration Friday piece that started out as a simple pencil sketch, got revisited with tracing paper and markers, partially colored with Prismas, then scanned, compiled and finished in Photoshop.“If God is the constant in my life,then, my love, you are the variable.Without you, it is possible I’d have visited less valleys,but assuredly, with you, I have seen that many more peaks.Our love is an intricate mess,one I wouldn’t trade for any other ...