Today, inspired by the challenge over at jb_daily , I made my first foray into icon-making. Which considering I only had Movie Maker (for the caps), MS Paint and MS Office Picture Manager, didn't start off too badly. I spent hours messing around with funky special effects on WMM. It was only when I tried to upload to lj that I discovered lj can't deal with .bmp files. So.... I figured out how to convert them to jpeg, only to find that once converted, they lost a lot of quality. Argh.

I can't be bothered to remake them again from scratch and as there's no other way to convert them and keep the quality, I'm just gonna suck it up and post them as they are. I warn you, The image quality is pretty poor.


( 11 Icons )

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In other news: I've not been online all that much recently, but when I have, I've been posting a photo-a day here: 29photos

Title: Pressure
Song: ‘Under Pressure’ by Queen and David Bowie
Episodes: Various clips from seasons 2 and 3 (but not Sentoo Pts 1 or 2)
Summary: Jim and Blair lead very stressful lives. It’s a good thing they’ve got each other…
Category: As gen as the show itself is (i.e, not very…) 

Youtube: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=tmQv9Y2zxZA

Download link (wmv): http://www.sendspace.com/file/w78fuh

I've been a bit absent from fandom-related stuff recently - Real Life getting in the way as usual.

However,  I have found time to work on another (i.e my second) songvid, for The Sentinel, of course. In fact, I just finished it, and I'm currently waiting for it to upload on youtube and sendspace. I actually started it on a whim a month or so ago, but it's been on hold for a while , only picking up where I left off a few days ago. Will probably be announcing it on TS News tonight, once everything's done and dusted.

In other news, I finally got to see Northern Lights The Golden Compass today. I've been wanting to see it since it first came out weeks ago, but just never managed to get around to it. Despite it getting a lot of bad reviews, I enjoyed it. I loved the aesthetics of Lyra's world (I knew I would, though - the descriptions in the book alone really appealed to me.) I loved their rendering of the London skyline. So familiar, yet so different at the same time. The Gyptians were cool, too, although sadly there wasn't enough about  them or their culture. The story was, for the most part, faithful to the book, and I don't know why so many complained about the religious stuff being toned down. For a start, the religious references were pretty much in the background in this, the first book in the trilogy. They don't get in-your-face obvious until the third book. Secondly, the references to Original Sin were blatantly religious, if you ask me.
 All in all, it was a good, enjoyable film, although it petered out at the end, which I blame on the fact that they finished the story about 4 chapters from where the book itself actually ends, and so lacked the finality of a proper ending. I guess the shocking ending of Nrthern Lights will have to be pushed forward to when the second book's adaptation hits the screens. Roll on 'The Subtle Knife'.  :)

I've just started re-reading Northern Lights  (a.k.a The Golden Compass) because of the upcoming film (which I am seriously excited about, btw) and it gave me some funny ideas: namely that I'd love to see a  'His Dark Materials'/Sentinel crossover fic. I admit, I don't usually like crossovers, and this would be pretty weird in some respects... it's just, while I was reading, I was noticing all sorts of parallels. For instance, people in Lyra's world have animal daemons which represent their souls....Jim and Blair have spirit animals.....there are shamans in His Dark Materials....Incacha passes on the way of the shaman to Blair...ok, I swear there were more than that! 

 I still think it could be interesting, seeing Jim and Blair with their daemons. In fact, I'm thinking I may have to write this at some point - the idea won't leave me alone. :D

Since starting my new job, I've been decidedly less fannish. However, I have managed to produce a couple of graphicky-wallpaper-like things, for The Left Hand of Darkness, one of my favourite books ever. (To be honest, all I did was add text to a couple of pre-existing photos, so it didn't exactly take much effort or talent on my part.)

http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc282/waverleysteps/lefthand_joy.jpg

http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc282/waverleysteps/lefthand_journeys_end.jpg


The lovely photos themselves are from this site: http://www.duluthstreams.org/understanding/iceVolcanoes.html

(As it's an educational site, and the photos are used as examples, I figured it was ok to use them without permission.) The quality isn't wonderful, mainly because I, ahem, made them using MS Paint...

Someone's uploaded the pilot ep of The Sentinel onto youtube! What a great discovery! :) 

*pounces on it* 

Well I've had some lovely responses to the vid. Makes me feel all warm inside :)

....I've decided that, however fun vidding is, I'll leave off starting any more projects for a while (altho that's not to say I don't have any ideas!) I'm just all vidded out! These last few days I've been pretty obsessive, so it's probably time to leave movie maker well enough alone. :D

In related news, it amuses me to realise my entire fannish output consists of:

-1 fic (admittedly only 200 words, but that still counts - I think -)
-1 fanart (now offline)
-1 vid

I guess variety of form is the spice of life, or something. So if I want to continue in this vein my next fannish venture should be...hmmmm. What's left? icons? fanmixes? podfic??? Oh the possibilities. :D 

 
Title: How to Save a life
Vidder: Wave
Song: ‘How to Save a Life’ by The Fray

Episodes: Various clips from seasons 2, 3 and 4

Summary: Jim blames himself.

Youtube: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xYvv3gHxPf4

Download link: http://www.sendspace.com/file/h097gm

The Sentinel vid is all done!  I finished it off quicker than I thought - go me! :D Just waiting for it to finish uploading on youtube and sendspace, then it's ready to post.

I'm wondering what comm would be the best for posting a link to the vid. I think I'll go with ts_news, seems the best place. That's the thing about TS - there's no centralised comm or fansite where everything goes. Probably because it's such a bloody big fandom, lol. It's decidedly not like Good Omens fandom, where all fic, fanart and discussion ends up on lower_tadfield - there's several different lj comms, as well as a whole labyrinthine network of mailing lists and personal sites to explore. It's overwhelming (in a good way) how much fic there is out there. It's a bit confusing knowing where to look for stuff, so I'm mostly sticking with 852prospect and lj-based comms for the moment. Maybe I'll branch out when I find my feet!

Today I spent most of the day working on my Sentinel vid. Luckily I had an excuse to stay in and do very little – we had the builders in today working on converting the garage, and as both my parents work, it seemed only fair for me to stay in all day and supervise (“supervising” actually translating to “making large quantities of sugary tea”) God knows what mum and dad are gonna do about the builders once I start work next week.

But anyway, I’m getting off-track. So yeah, working on my Sentinel vid: A few thoughts -

 1. Windows Movie Maker is incredibly easy to use (I’m not the most computer literate person in the world and I found myself picking it up surprisingly quickly. )  I don’t know if there are any better vidding programs out there, but for a free program, it’s pretty cool.

2. There needs to be some way of ‘fixing’ clips to parts of the song, so that if you change something earlier in the vid, it doesn’t muck up the sync of the rest of the vid.

3. Once this is done, I’ll probably never want to hear ‘How to save a life’ by The Fray ever again.

I am absolutely determined to finish this vid by at least Friday, if not before. The vid needs a lot of work, but I think (hope?) I can manage it.

I also watched the episode Spare Parts today. Wasn’t one of the best eps, but not bad either: I’m glad they got someone who actually looks similar to Blair to play his mother, although she seemed a bit young, to be honest. I found the main car-stealing plot a bit tedious in places, but the Blair-Naomi-Jim interactions were funny – loved the end with Naomi showing Jim Blair’s baby photos. Too cute. :D

Haven't been reading as much fic lately as I used to - instead I've been bingeing on episodes of The Sentinel, courtesy of the absolutely wonderful Temple of the Sentinels site.  I am so unbelievably glad that someone was kind enough to upload these eps, because god knows I’d never get to see them any other way – the show has, as far as I know, never been repeated on British Terrestrial TV and the season One DVDs are only available in Region One format *pouts*.

It’s funny – I’d heard from a few places that The Sentinel was, well, a little corny. Granted, there is the occasional plot hole and a fair few wtf-moments, but for the most part it is surprisingly well-acted and entertaining. Plus, it’s got a great concept – something I find hard to resist in TV shows. But best of all, it lives up to all the promises, in that it’s incredibly, incredibly gay. Gay to the point where I honest-to-god wonder what on earth the producers were thinking. They claim their target audience was young men, so they threw in a lot of action, explosions and car chases…. as well as what is, in all but name, a love story between two men. I mean, really? *mind boggles*. Not that I don’t appreciate it (boy do I appreciate it….;) ), but, seriously, they must have had some idea of how Jim and Blair’s relationship looked?

In other, related news: I seem to be making a Sentinel songvid, which is a little surprising, seeing as up until last week, I had never vidded before in my life (didn't have the slightest clue how to go about it, in fact). Basically, I was messing around trying to figure out how to work my recently-downloaded Windows Movie Maker, when I  imported a few Sentinel clips to have fun with.... and before I know it I'm setting them to music, and the start of a songvid is born! Now I'll just see if I can get round to finishing it... well, unless I can get it finished this week, it’s pretty unlikely: I’m starting full-time work next week (my first adult job – I feel grown up ;) ) and won’t get home til 8pm – I doubt I’ll want to get straight on the computer after a hard days work. But you never know.

Ah well, fandom:  it’s kept me entertained in the long weeks of unemployment since uni. For that I can’t thank it enough. :D

Well I've had this journal for a few months now, and feel it's time I actually make some use of it (other than for lurking-purposes :D)

So....where to start?

....Ok, um, a little about me: Female, British, 21 years of age, graduated from uni this summer. Somewhat shy and awkward. Painfully self-conscious. Spends far too much time on her laptop. Currently (and reluctantly) job-hunting. Currently also spending inordinate amounts of time reading fanfic and generally lurking in fandom. In fact that's pretty much what I set up this journal for - I decided I needed some kind of 'home base' to keep track of my various fandom communities. So this lj will most likely be very fandom-focused (if I decide to carry on updating it, that is.)

One way or another, I've been in fandom since about 2004, when I caught the Harry Potter bug (well I'd been reading the books since they first came out, just didn't discover the fandom til then). Used to hang out on both fanfiction.net (before it became totally unreedemably bad...) and on GAFF under the name Wrennie, which I abandoned a coupla years or so ago. Now I've settled on going by 'Wave'.

Fandoms I have loved/have lurked in include Harry Potter, Good Omens, the manga 'From Eroica With Love', the TV show Life on Mars and most recently The Sentinel, which I discovered after seeing it recommended on another lj and have since fallen head-over-heels in love with. 

Fandom is my secret love, lol.  However my other, more public loves include: photography (been snapping away since I was a kid), music (of which I am vaguely obsessive) and in the last few years psychology, in particular personality psychology. I'm especially interested in personality typing systems like Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram (which I am currently having much fun applying to fictional characters.)

So yeah, that's a bit about me. I'm not sure how often I'll update this thing but one thing I've decided is I want to participate more in fandom, rather than just watching from the sidelines. It seems funny that In the last 3 or 4 years, the only fandom-related stuff I've produced have been one drabble and one piece of fanart (both in Good Omens fandom.)

So my new-months resolution (is there such a thing? If not, there is now!): Participate more. Lurk less. Oh yeah, and also leave feedback for those wonderful Sentinel fics I keep discovering, That fandom is good. :D

First of the month. New beginnings. A nice day for a fresh start. :)