A friend asked for some podcast recommendations, and this is what I offered up. Since I get the question fairly often, or some variation on the theme, I thought I would share it here (and on my travel blog rideoffintothesunset.com) publicly so I could reference it when folks ask.

The Creative Penn - about independent author life. Production and sale of books without traditional publishers. 

The Dungeon Run - an Actual Play of 5e that I like. 

The Great Detectives of Old Time Radio - just what the title says. Old radio shows from the 50s in podcast format. I can't take the host's voice for very long and tend to skip straight to the shows. Johnny Dollar are my fave. 

How Not to DM - interview show about ttrpgs and how not to...

LORE - 1 part Twilight Zone + 1 part mythology. Been listening to this guy forever. Pure mood. 

Make Me Smart - NPResque news show. Different style to each weekday (deep dive v fun v etc)

Life in the Ted Lane - my friend Lindsay (who you may know) and her brother Ted talk about Autism, the Muppets, and their myriad adventures. 

Re: Thinking - interview show with industry leaders, scientists, etc about looking at subjects from a different/ new perspective

Science Versus - one of my faves. A scientific breakdown of different popular opinions like "Is one adult beverage / day a health benefit?"

The TED Interview - a deeper dive into the topics of TED Talks. 

Think Like a Game Designer - how to do what the title says. 

Travel Writing World - about writing about your travels and interviews with folks who do that. 

Twenty Thousand Hertz - a podcast about sound.

Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me - the NPR news game show in podcast format.

Tech News Briefing from the Wall St Journal - news about tech from the WSJ. 

There are many more that I personally subscribe to, but this list has a bit of diversity to it, and (I believe) will be enjoyable to a larger collection of people.​​​​​​​

If you're reading this, and you're wondering about some specific genre or topic of podcast, feel free to ask me about it, or tell me if you have some recommendations! I’m always looking for new and interesting stuff to listen to.

(Also, while this list has links to each of the shows for convenience, they should be available through most any podcast catcher. I personally use PocketCasts. If you haven't chosen one yet, I can recommend it. Simple and effective.)

One of the themes in my life of late is to try to get as many folks as I can to see the illustration stuff I'm doing. In an era of "you don't see everything from everyone you follow" social media, this is... more challenging than seems reasonable.

I understand that mailing lists are the way to go for that, but the problem with mailing lists are two fold: 1. You have to get people onto them, which many folks are loathe to do. 2. Once they're on your list, many folks ignore / delete the emails because they're 'extra'.

Which isn't to say I'm not going that route. On the contrary. I probably will. I've started to before, but never really finished (see all my previous commentary on ADHD).

Even if / when I DO manage to create a reasonable email list, that still doesn't get around issue 1. The vast majority of the internet using world won't be on it. And dragonbones.net is accessible to pretty much everyone who has access to the web.

Shut up, man. Get to the point.

Okay, okay. Sorry. Verbose Guy here.

I thought I would start doing a monthly summary post on dragonbones about the sketch work that I did the month prior.

It's a good art-news system, it gives folks a taste of what's in the Patreon page if they might be interested, and it keeps dragonbones fresh(ish).

So here's the first one: The Sketchy Stuff from December 2022.

(Dwarf at the top of the page is just something I was noodling on... yesterday? This is at about the 1/2 hour stage.)

Yes, we get it. You made an ebook. 

Sorry - I know you've probably seen me posting about it elsewhere. Thing is, you can have it for free, if you like, and I want as many people to have access to it as possible.

Didn't get anything for your neice for the holidays? Bingo. Grandson's into fantasy / D&D? Sold. They can print the pages out and color them as many times as they like.

I won't tell if you're there coloring alongside them. ;)

Anyway, if you haven't picked up a copy yet, it's available on my site / Gumroad here: 

If you do download / gift / check it out, I would love to hear what you liked or disliked about it! (I'm planning to do more like this in the future, so all feedback helps.)

Sorry for the late notice, but if any of y'all are around York, PA (or willing to go there) tonight at about 7pm, my buddy Brad and I will be demoing Maze of Minos at Brad's FLGS - The Gamehaven Cafe and Bakery.

We're going to demo the game and I'm going to record the process so I can  practice and take a copy with me on the road and do demos in the various game shops I come across while traveling.

Since some of us have been talking about Ye Olde Birdsite, I thought I would make sure y'all saw that there's been a breach, so you might want to reset your passwords and / or add two step authentication if you hadn't already.

You may feel 'done' with the site, but just remember that things can be done in your name if someone gets ahold of your account.

(Okay, I'll stop telling you all things you already know. I just worry about my peeps.)

For reference: (the teaser text is a little misleading - this is a recent breach)

I've been seeing a lot of talk about how many Twitter users are trying out Mastodon (and others on the Fediverse) but that they find it too difficult to use.

While I realize that the crowd here tend to be a bit more tech savvy than the mean, I was wondering if any of you had that experience?

Rest assured, I won't judge - I'm just curious where the tricky parts are and if I could offer any help. I'm guessing that if any of you had challenges with some or all aspects of Mastodon, there's certain to be others.

So far, I'm finding it really tough to find anyone who will say "I had trouble with x, y, and z aspects." There's just a lot of hand waving and 'generally too complex'.

That's hard to help with.

(Image selected because it's the closest to Mastodon of the things I've done.)

Thinking about doing NaNoWriMo this year, but I'm behind on the very tail end of Inktober and want to finish that first.

And really, this year, Thanksgiving is going to be the 'big' holiday since Trina, Ben, and the boys will be in town then and not for Christmas.

But with all of that said, I know I can 'win', and I kinda want that.

I first attempted NaNo in 2008, and it was a rough attempt. I mean, I started at least a week late (though memory says more) and with tremendous support from Jill "xtingu" Knapp I still almost crossed the finish line.

So it's kinda stuck in my craw ever since.

I've only made half hearted attempts in subsequent years.

I think that, as I'm writing this, I'm 'talking myself into it'.

Well, I guess I better get my Inktober images finished. I've got a lot to get done in the next 24 hours.

It will almost be something fantasy or urban fantasy based, but what do you think I should write about?

I did a little experimental thread over on my Twitter stream. I wanted to encourage a couple of things - namely audience interaction and I wanted to provide them an actual reason to share the thread.

Simply put: I provided a series of polls for folks to vote on to determine how I constructed a monster.

Here's a link to the thread in case you're curious.

The results to the first poll (bipedal or quadrapedal) was:

The second poll was what kind of terrain the creature spends its time in. The audience chose subterranean so I added digging claws and narrowed the torso to make the creature more wedge shaped.

The third poll was how many heads the creature has. Crowd said 2.

And the fourth and final poll was what kind of tail to give it (or to give it none). The crowd picked a long straight tail with a club end.

After the final poll, I finished the tail and posted it and then felt like I should go ahead and paint it. Since I was already in an experimental mode, I took the sketch, blurred it a bit, and then mixed the sketch lines in with the digital paint layers. The final results are at the top of the post.

Here's the process video if you enjoy that.

I really need to get back to the work for my Patreon page, but this was an excellent little experiment and I plan to do it again in the near future.

This is the character I'm currently working on for Patreon:

Just a super rough series of sketches (done separately and then laid out together) and there are plenty of issues, but I really enjoyed doodling these while playing D&D tonight.

Still doing the heads thing. Here we have 36-40 and they be gerblins!

In case you're curious about the pseudo random geometric shapes I started this batch with, you're in luck - here they are:

If you would like to see the rest, they're in a thread over on the Twitterz.

Not So Traditional Media

So I won't be in town, but my family is having a get together this Sunday. There's going to be some festivities for the youngins' thanks to my folks. Slip 'n Slide, water balloon toss, etc.

And speaking of tossing water balloons, my folks asked if I would create a target to put down in the yard so they can launch balloons at it from the deck.

My Dad got the idea that it would be good to use Tyvek since it's all white so the image would stand out. Tyvek isn't exactly the best surface to work on, but I couldn't argue with the contrast idea and he has a bunch extra so it was free, and it's durable, so... Sharpies worked to lay in lines:

Then, because this is clearly a "use what you've got handy" kind of project, we used a pair of random latex based house paints (watered down to various levels) that they had on hand and some overly large brushes to paint it. This was a little extra trying BECAUSE TYVEK.

But also, I was having fun doing something stupid and calling it art. So:

Certainly not the greatest work I've ever done, but it was fun, and hopefully the kids will get a kick out of chucking stuff at it. :)

Also, it kinda looks like a goblin head. I think I've got goblins on the brain lately.