Waffle

I ran 56:44 net (56:49 gross) in the 11 km at this year’s Thesinge Run on Saturday, finishing 18th out of 49. I’m very satisfied with this result. Prior to the event, I didn’t feel ready for it - I’d come out of trainings feeling like I couldn’t keep up with my training-mates and on the day itself, I had some mild asthma problems. I was also worried that I’d knock myself out in the first few kilometers, because I’d never run an 11K or even a 10K before.

In the end, the asthma concern actually helped me, because I had another motivation to slow down at the start. My breathing was irregular during the first half but stabilized during the second. I was able to talk throughout the event. At the 1K point, the guy running next to me clocked us at 4:50, at which I slowed down a bit more. I passed the 4 Mile mark (official length of the 4 Mijl van Groningen) at a little over 33 minutes, and could speed up a bit during the last 2 kilometers, catching up again with the guy with the stopwatch before finishing.

Wilma de Vries, winner of the women’s 11K, told me she’d seen me finish and that I was looking pretty good at the finish line. In short, I ran the race by the book and finished with energy to spare. Good. Next year, if I’m still in the Netherlands, I’ll knock a few minutes off that time.

I love the Thesinge Run. It’s only in its second year, but it’s well-organized, with many of the teething problems from last year dealt with. The start was earlier in the day so no one had to run in the dark, and there were real dressing/showering facilities and a pasta meal after the run this year (I didn’t go to the pasta meal, preferring to drop by at my parents, who live nearby and hit them up for food instead). Because the community center had been renovated, partly with the takings from last year’s run, there was a bar as well, so when I fancied a beer after the race, I could have one. That drew some comments from people in the audience as I was drinking beer while still in my running clothes. Also, this year’s weather was fantastic.

What hadn’t changed was the inclusive atmosphere, with the entire village turning out to help out, encourage runners, take photographs and have a good time with the event and make everyone feel a winner. The different categories were also set up to allow everyone to take part, with special kids’ runs for the very youngest (though young children who felt up to it could also take part in the adult events and the women’s 4K was in fact won by a nine-year-old girl) and generous time limits allowing people to walk the 4K and 4M. It’s the camaraderie that makes the Thesinge Run so much fun - that and running on gravel and shell paths running through farmland. I didn’t notice quite as many cowpats as last year, which I’m grateful for.

Me at about 2 km || Me at a hundred meters or so from the starting line, though I can’t tell if it’s the first or second time I passed that spot

Drawing that just popped up in my head the other day, after talking to Aggie about the economic crisis. Of course, after the drawing pops up in one’s head, one has to do the hard work of drawing it - including research for things like wheelbarrows full of money.

When I googled for “Wheelbarrow full of money”, I noticed something interesting. I expected to get only images of the German hyperinflation of 1923, but instead got a whole bunch of stock photos and illustrations showing succesful, wealthy, smiling people pushing wheelbarrows full of cash. I guess because the US has never experienced hyperinflation (yet), they associate wheelbarrows full of cash with wealth rather than with the collapse of a financial system resulting in poverty for large sections of the population. I have never personally experienced hyperinflation (yet) but to me as a somewhat historically educated European, the image of a wheelbarrow full of cash is not a happy one. Thinking about this has made me want to do more art relating to money, the lack or oversupply of it, and the different cultural assumptions and constructs surrounding it. There’ll be more nekkid people in it, either to sugarcoat the theme, or because they’ve just lost their shirts.

Update: This drawing is now for sale through my Comicspace galleries. You will need to sign up with Comicspace to be able to see it (to certify that you are old enough to look at nipples) but the process is easy and does not result in you getting spammed. If you don’t want to buy it that way, though, you can also e-mail me and buy from me directly. Price is set at $100 - not exactly a bucketload of money.

I have also made it available as a Print via DeviantArt, in a range of formats and at the default prices. There, too, you’ll have to sign up to view and order.

Using uninked pencil art, like I’ve done on Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan for the past three weeks and on American Gothic before that, saves me some time, but not as much as you would think. The time savings don’t come from skipping the inking and colouring phases - all the effort that used to go into inking and colouring (keeping in mind that DFG has been doing the colour flats on my comics for almost two years now) now go into the final pencil line art and the grey pencil tones.

The time savings that I do get come from a) simplifying the process so there is no longer a separate Photoshop colouring stage after I get the colour flats back from DFG, and b) the elimination of wet media accidents, which I’m very prone to. The comic creation process still takes a whole afternoon even if I cut corners in drawing backgrounds - a page full of close-ups is easier for me to do than one with lots of scenery or action, so that’s the sort of pages I’ve been drawing. I am very envious of Aggie’s ability to just knock out an American Gothic page in a few hours.

Last long weekend (a local holiday), I didn’t get two pages of Feral done so there’s still no buffer. The buffer for Invasion is running out already. Next weekend, I may end up not having an afternoon of uninterrupted drawing time. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride, and it’s only three weeks into my resumption of art duties on Feral.

One of the most infuriating things about Ubuntu is the way it will tease you with a system that recognises all your devices, like, say, an Epson GT-12000 A3 scanner, running from the LiveCD, beautifully, but when you actually add, say, an Epson GT-12000 A3 scanner to an installed system, it will make you jump through hoops and tear your hair out. I’ve installed the sane package (much to my surprise - I’d have expected it to come with the initial OS install, especially because a front-end was automatically installed at that time. Also, sane runs from the LiveCD) and the Avasys drivers that Epson recommends, to no avail.

Oh well… I’m sure I’ll get there some day, and in the mean time, it won’t kill me to scan from Windows XP for a few days.

My 2003 guest series for Fight Cast or Evade, People of the Sewer, has now been added to the archives at ROCR.net. Read it one page at a time or all sixteen installments as a giant vertical scroll.
It’s almost a year since Fight Cast or Evade ended, and it’s time I brought this story home. It’s another affectionate parody of the fantasy clichés underlying so many fantasy/RPG webcomics, so I’ve archived it under Unfantasy. It’s different from the other comics in that section of the website though, because it’s a rare foray into Furry comics for me, and because it has a lot of poop-based humour. And haikus, but mostly poop. It’s a yin-yang kinda thing.

Drawing those animal characters was a lot of fun for me back in 2003. I’d like to do that again some time.

If you’re reading this on the ROCR.net front page, you’re seeing the new site, hosted on Lunarpages. This has been one of the smoothest server moves I’ve ever been involved in, but there may still be some broken links here and there. Please use the comments to tell me if you see something badly wrong.

The old server on rocr.xepher.net will probably stay on air for a while - I haven’t discussed this with Xepher yet. But please always link to http://rocr.net if you’re linking to the comics.