Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts

Saturday, October 17, 2009

e1nquarium

To keep myself occupied during this period of unemployment, I decided to get myself a fish tank last week. I figured taking care of fishies would be a better course of action than to fall deep into depression of not having a job.

That said, I present you, the e1nquarium!





Peanut, the Ghost Catfish, likes to hide behind plants. Apparently these bottom-dwellers just like shades in general.



Although once in a while he'd come outside and show himself off. Strangely enough, he does this at some seemingly random time when I wasn't looking. This was the only shot of him not hiding that I could get. They say that Ghost Catfish need buddies, so in the future when I have a bigger tank I might get Peanut some friends: Butter and Jelly.



Mo the Yellow Apple Snail likes to wander around to places, sometimes even all the way up to the surface. Just the other day he seemed to have fallen down from the top of the tank, since I found him upside down and unable to move around. Stupid suicidal snail scared the crap out of me because I thought he died, but turns out he's perfectly okay and has been out and about all day.



Fluffy the Zebra Danio is a top-swimmer, and the way he darts from places to places makes me afraid that one day he's gonna dart out of the tank. He's a little hyper, but he seems to be entertaining himself and not attacking the other fishies.



I also got myself some Ghost Shrimps as recommended by Jo. At first I was rather hesitant to keep some shrimps along with my fishies, but as it turns out, these two have been more entertaining than any of my fishies. That above is Fred fighting with his own reflection. Fred is the fatter one of the two shrimps.



And this is George. He's a lot more adventurous than Fred, but he also likes to hide under the big fake rock decoration when he's tired. Every morning I'd wake up and freak out because George is always missing, but later on in the day he'd show up again.



The visual aesthetic of Cardinal Tetras was one of the main reasons I decided to start a tank. When the fluorescent light is on, the blue stripe on their body GLOWS, and somehow that amuses me to no end. I think Peanut is awesome, and Fred and George are entertaining, but these Tetras have got to be the prettiest fish in the tank. Eenie is the one at the top with a kink on the stripe, and right underneath him is Miney. Minnie is the one at the very bottom. It's actually really hard to tell Minnie and Miney apart, but if you look closely, Miney is slightly fatter than Minnie.




And here we have more of the trio posing in front of the fake rock. It's one of the few rare shots I managed to get of all three of them schooling, since Eenie likes to venture out alone, while Minnie and Miney seem to always go everywhere together.



Also due to Jo's recommendation, I got 2 Sunset Dwarf Platys to increase the color variation of the fishies in the tank. Platy is the fat (possibly pregnant) orange platy. This whole week she's been a douche to the rest of the inhabitants, especially the shrimps. She gobbles up just about every food I threw down there, and when the flakes were all gone, she'd go after Fred's algae wafer bits. Platy also seems to be constantly pooping because everytime I turn around to look at the tank, I see her swimming in front of my face with a long strand of shit dangling off her butt. Very womanly.



Puss, the other dwarf platy is a bit more shy. He always roams around the back of the tank and hide behind the fake rock. Here I managed to manually adjust my camera's focus to catch Puss hiding behind the rocks and plants.

I'm getting two more Guppies in a few weeks, and then my tank will be complete.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

24 hours, 24 pages!

I'm seriously thinking of participating.



There's a store hosting this in Rancho Cucamonga, which is about 25 minutes drive from here, and another one in Manhattan Beach, which is about an hour away. The Rancho store looks like a more viable option, but the Manhattan Beach store looks a lot more fun and organized. Events like these look like they would be a fun social, as they are intended to be, but normally after much deliberation I always end up with a conclusion that I'm not very social after all and that it would probably be most comfortable for me to just participate from home.

It really is quite unfortunate that I don't know any comic artist around here with whom I can go to events such as this one. Most of my artist friends do illustrations, and my persistent efforts to drag them down into the world of sequential arts have had the success rate of a sickly goldfish trying to live inside a plastic igloo sitting in a hamster cage.

If you are also a comic artist and can't find a site that hosts this event nearby, I suggest you join me and participate from home. I will be online in my DeviantArt chat channel, #arke1ntoofle throughout this 24-hour period, during which I will try to finish 24 comic pages. Rough pages, of course, for it is not humanely possible for one person to finalize one comic page per hour, complete with toning and everything. Share your story ideas in the chatroom! Brainstorm with us if you haven't had any idea! I may not own a physical establishment to host an event like this one, but since everyone has internet these days, there is nothing wrong with hosting an event in a cyber establishment.

Start time: Saturday, October 3, 2009 - 1pm PST
End time: Sunday, October 4, 2009 - 1pm PST
Location: DA Chat Channel: #arke1ntoofle
Bring your own snack, food, and energy drinks, though. I can't supply you these things digitally.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Mango A-Go-Go

I am currently in possession of a robo dwarf hamster named Mango, who has the tendency to perform the most amazing backflip while running at high speed in his silent spinner wheel.



While Mango is no stranger to the concept of acceleration, it seemed like the idea of deceleration escaped him completely; the little guy would repeat this feat no matter how many times he flew, flipped, and fell with a loud thud on his bedding-covered cage floor. Persistency is indeed a virtue, but especially more so when it provides a lasting amusement to the outsider watching you make a complete fool of yourself.