... or "Why backup up, both often and diversely, is so important."

If you know Jodie and I, you know we enjoy movies, own quite a few and often fall into the role of being-a-local-BLOCKBUSTER-to-our-friends. It is for those reasons that we use the amazing Delicious Library application that Wil Shipley and his grass-roots team have developed for the Mac. With barcode scanning, Address Book-based check-in/out and a wifi-synced iPhone application, it is way better than any on paper setup we have had in the past.

Here is my entry for this week's Illustration Friday theme of "dip" ... it goes out to my wife, Jodie, who is convinced the time is right for swimming, sun-ing and in general heading to the beach. I say it's still spring.

This is all vector, mixing some Brush strokes, the Blob Brush, the new (but still lame) in-line Gradient tool and a tad bit of Illustrator's Raster Effects thrown in for fun.

You may have missed the announcement a few weeks ago, but one of my favorite games, Plants vs. Zombies, from one of my favorite Mac game developers, Pop Cap, has just spouted up on the iPhone. Now you can continue to quell some beautifully illustrated zombie madness on the go!

I know Jodie didn't install this on her iPhone, for fear of losing her life to it ... but I had no such qualms. Parcelling out ...

I just thought I would share part of the Valentine's Day gift I made for Jodie this year ... 24 different designs and pop-culture references for 24 different ways to say "I Love You". If my math is right, then that should be about one per hour of the day and if your guess is right, these were sized perfectly for her iPhone screen. So in spite of AT&T's at-times finicky MMS network, she still ...

Now that I have a nice platform in place for posting up new content, I thought it would as good as time as any to try working up a few comics every week. Nothing too fancy and I'm not planning on making any long term promises, but for now it seems like a fun idea.

The Skinny

We spent some time at my parents' place in South Florida this weekend and I happened to have a few ...

My mother only taught me a few things to do with a banana that is taking a turn towards the "caca". You can either make some delicious banana bread or a smooth and icey banana milkshake. I decided to go with the blend and document all of the yummy ingredients. Normally, it would need vanilla ice cream, but I happened to use strawberry for tonight's icey treat.

On an interesting side note, since our new place ...

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".

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

… err, mouse.My trusty Apple Mighty Mouse hasn’t been connecting immediately/reliably the last few days, despite re-doing the Bluetooth settings several times. Turns out fresh batteries are key … one of my wonderfully green USB Cell batteries has been wonderfully lying to me about its charge and still needed more rest. A couple of new coppertops later and I am back in business … but, of course, not before I made fun of the mighty ...

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

Here is another piece in the portrait series … thanks to my dad’s love for John Wayne. Such a great part of my childhood. The Alamo, The Green Berets, McLintock!, Hellfighters and so many more …If you want, you can see the original image here. I did this piece on the deliciously sweet Wacom Cintiq 21UX that I am still borrowing from Full Sail. Every brush stroke is like variable-weight vanilla frosting.

Psalms 18:30 (King David)“As for God, his way is perfect;the word of the LORD is flawless.He is a shieldfor all who take refuge in him.”

So, I woke up this morning, fixing problems left and right and feeling good … until I realized I had double-paid one of our bills. AAaahh!!What had happened was (yes, Mom. You have to say that in a ghetto voice) … in anticipation of getting paid last Friday, I scheduled a payment in advance. Then, actually ON Friday, I made the mistake of paying the bill anyway. After several phone calls, I was able to ...

So I haven’t really been sleeping lately and it is doing wonders for my eyes and my hair … and by wonders, I of course mean I am tired and afraid to look in the mirror most nights/mornings.Oh and with this sketch, I was kinda trying to give a node to Willie Baronet’s fantastic style of clean simple lines. It really doesn’t compare to his work, but I like how it turned out overall.

Money has been pretty tight for us lately, so it was a pretty great feeling to be able to go out Saturday afternoon and buy some groceries to fill our empty fridge.Of note, I would say the best purchases made were: Milk (now I can finish that bag of Cap’n Crunch)Pepperjack cheese slices (mmmhmm … tangy)Frozen pizza (well … you know)Creamy Peanut butter (I would have preferred chunky, but the pregnant lady won this one)I also ...

Since I got home from work late last night, I wasn’t able to pick up the extra special box Jessica sent until this morning. And since I have been hawk-edly watching the FEDEX shipping notifications for eight full days, it is no wonder I couldn’t sleep!So, you may ask … what was in the box? Well, not only did Jess send my new camera, a Canon S5 IS (EEEEeeee!!), and accessories and our new wireless ...

Sometimes, the best things in life are the simplest. Jodie and I enjoyed a great day together, starting with the service at Southside Christian Church this week.It was an especially nice day, since I got to play acoustic guitar … ah, the fun!

Lilo and I spend the day today lounging around and keeping warm … me in my Homer Simpson slippers and her cuddling up really close to any one she could. We also took turns this morning laying on the sunshine-y warm parts of the living room floor, though she kept kicking me out of her space.It really is nice having it down to 45 degrees here in Florida … I don’t envy Jessica’s “feels like ...

Wednesday morning, afternoon and night were completely filled with Chick-fil-A awesomeness. With the unbelievable amount of free food, crazy high-tension Speed UNO games and my mom singing along to Flo Rida’s “Low” … it was almost more fun than I could of handled!In case you are wondering how someone could possibly have to draw 16 cards in UNO … you clearly haven’t played UNO with our house rules. Stop by some time and we’ll show ...

So my family has only had a Nintendo Wii for like 11 days and already Margie is the king of Boxing, David has triple Pro status and even my visually-challenged father is killing it in Wii Bowling. I seriously just watched him bowl a straight Turkey! Gah!Despite my best efforts and months of prior ‘mote and Nunchuk experience, I still got schooled … especially by Margie. My quick one-two jab combos were no match for ...

Note: If you have ever wanted a glimpse into the off-kilter and corrugated psyche that leads to all of the illustrations you see here, never has there been more of an opportunity. I hope you enjoy.Recently I have been doing a lot of reading, which has included the fair share of books on technology (i.e. Ruby, AJAX, CSS, etc.), classic literature (Don Quixote, Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist) and even some of my childhood ...

More of a self-reminder than anything else, here are two recent Apple MacBook issues and their respective solutions:Josh VanTassel’s MacBookIssue: When attempting to boot up, after the initial gray screen, a black screen with the message “Error : non-system disk. Press any key to reboot.” appears and will not go away without a force-reboot.Resolution: Resetting the PRAM or SMC did nothing. After several attempts to start up from a backup Tiger CD failed, I ...

Day 2008-1-5 (uploaded by DRA Studio)For my Jodie:“the ocean’s tide; it is calmed.the push of breeze; it is stilled.time itself finds a stopping place.In the moments when you are gone,Life is weak.”“And breathing; it is hard.the flow of feeling; it is numb.The mind has found a different pace.This heart I suffer and bearhas an aching beat.”“Love is life and in the seek of what’sfleeting, love in its strengthwill stop the heart of beating.”Sorry that this ...