the spectrum of happiness

Everyone has bad, days, okay. Everyone gets hurt, everyone suffers, one way or another. Atleast, that's the general consensus. I know this. But the way I like to think of things is that not being happy is simply having less happiness; there is no suffering, because it's only a concept. Like darkness. There's no shadow, just a relatively lightless place. 

In the same way, there is no actual sadness, just relative happiness. And just as there is no absolute darkness (There will always be electromagnetic radiation, whether you like it or not c: ), there is no absolute void of happiness. There simply exists no such thing. I get so down when I hear people say that life is suffering, because that's just a fault of attitude; there will always be happiness, just not always equally much of it. 

Any arguments for suicide, or depression, will still be as valid, I'm not trying to convince anyone that they're in fact happy, because people are depressed, there are no two ways about it. Little happiness is still the same thing as sadness. But perspective matters, and if people focus only on the bad instead of the good, then no wonder people get depressed. I used to hate how my father always told me "It's a matter of attitude; Its only as good as you make it.", but as I grow older this only seems to grow more truthful.

No happiness will ever come to you by itself. There is no innate happiness, happiness has to be taken, earned, or given. It needs a source. What I think is the key to actually being happy, and feeling good about yourself, is doing stuff about the things that don't make you happy. Either, don't do these things at all, or do them right. Whatever makes you happy is right. The only right that exists in the world, is happiness. Anything else is simply wrong. Man is supposed to enjoy life. It's not a chore, and it surely is the only chance at even experiencing happiness you'll ever have. Death can always be worse, because in death, there exists no medium for happiness. It's an eternal absolute void of happiness. To my way of thinking, something like this doesn't even exist in life, only in death.

RANDOM INBETWEENER DRAWING*

Happiness. I'm happy. There are so many things in life that make me happy. I was asked today, and it set me thinking... "Are you a sensitive person, do you ever even feel bad?". Well, I think I could be a sensitive person, people often tell me so, but I'm happy enough to make any detracting insults or condescending comments insignificant. This doesn't mean things don't hurt me, it just means I'm happy enough to shrug it off.

Why am I happy? I don't know, some people are easily pleased, some people are quick to laugh. I just derive tons of happiness from all kinds of things. Everyone has things that make them feel good, but not everyone is able to appreciate these things as much as they possibly can. Or maybe it is the fact that I've never been happier which makes me convinced I'm happy.

Still, psychologists call them instrumental values. Things that make a person happy. I think people think I'm quite aware of my looks, as I tediously make my hair every morning and generally make an effort, sacrifice practicality for style etc.. I don't do this because I want to look nice, that's not what it's about. I do these things because they make me feel good about myself.

Last month, I opted to not shave all month. People asked me why I was doing that, even I don't think I look any better with the measly beard I can grow, but the simple answer was... I did it because having a beard was satisfying. It's really simple. Every millimeter of that beard made me feel better. Then the feeling grew old, so I shaved, and now I'm just happy because I look better than I did last month. The important thing is I'm satisfied. And this morning, I braved the world in my faux-leather jacket, and mother of god, that jacket does make me feel good about myself. Ever since I bought it. I know it does, so I wear it. If it didnt, I'd have bought a new one years ago.



*THAT DRAWING
I've been meaning to write about a friend of mine for a while now, a blogging peer, one could say. He writes stuff, weird stuff, random stuff, brilliant stuff. Kinda like myself, we have things in common (Male bloggers in our genre are quite scarce), and we kinda discuss most of the things we write about. He has made a few references to my blog recently, so I felt it would only be fair to point some of my own readers his way. That drawing up there is interesting, because I post it here as a sort a response to an illusion he drew and wrote about a couple entries back. I'll say, though, mine is much more a stylized drawing, while his drawing is simply brilliant in its illusory property. While I'm an artist working in pictures, this guys true gift is not drawing, it's music. Do read.

http://lucidshadowdreamer.blogspot.fi/

Be warned, though, this guy writes even longer entries than I do. It's not for the faint of heart.

Pseudo-tattoos and rainmeter!

No, mom, I didn't get a tattoo, I just drew it with markers. Calm down.

I'm a little torn on the subject... Huoh, generally, I don't like tattoos. I don't think I'll ever get one, either. I would say they don't really look that nice, but that'd be an awkward thing to say since I draw stuff on my arms anyway! And done right, they can look pretty awesome!

I think it's mostly because of the social stigma. There are no two ways about it, people associate tattoos with lower-status citizens. Plebe or proletarian being some of my favourite words, it would just be weird. It's like a newspapers vendor, or a cleaning lady, telling you to get a job. It would just be low.

Not because I look down on tattooed people myself, but because I know lots of people do. There's no denying it. It's a shame that it has to be that way, because tattoos are no lower a form of art than writing, making music or painting, or any other craftsmanship. Only the medium is different.

A snake on a dagger. Very classic, somehow. I could totally see someone actually making something like this into a tattoo. Personally, I wouldn't, because it doesn't really mean anything. I don't support getting tattoos for purely aesthetic reasons. If it's something youre going to carry for the rest of your days, then it has to mean something. If not, it's just wrong. And not just some text, either. Please. I know a lot of people who do have these kinds of tattoos, and... Yeah. No. Don't do that. It's even lower than tribals.



Also, Rainmeter! No, it doesnt actually have anything to do with rain. Rainmeter is a desktop customization toolset for Windows. Yeah, you guys know me, I'm a PC geek, and no, I'm not expecting you to be interested.

My PC broke down the other day, forcing me to format and reinstall windows. I lost my old Rainmeter skins, but I quickly made another! Its the only sort of programming that I can do or that I'm even remotely interested in doing. I programmed myself a clock, showing the time in s;m;hr, and also the day of the month, and the month, and it looks a little like this;

All the numbers move over the screen to the right. The red number represents the actual time; 00 seconds, and 3 minutes after 10 in the evening. My bike got stolen some time ago (Refound, now... :O ), and it had a lock with a code. I kinda thought about those rotating coils when I made this skin. Anyhow, I won't write much more about this, but I did make a page for all my Rainmeter code, and this one will be the first of the bunch.

Rainmeter code page.

GIFS in GIMP; how to

Oh, yes. Im intentionally targeting the search motors by using very simple language in the title. Clever. When people want to learn how to make Gifs, they dont google for "GREAT MANUAL OF GIFBOOKING" or, god, "GIMP user manual", or something awkward like that, no, people use searchwords like "How to", or TUTORIAL (Im intentionally writing this word here, just for you, google!), along with whatever they're trying to achieve. Hopefully, the happy googlers will be trafficked right here, to my little blog.

I noticed my RAW vs JPEG entry, an old one, way in the dark part of the blog, is one of my most read ones, and I guess that can be attributed to its title, which is so... Plain. It's something one might write into google search, yahoo, bing or whatevers.

SO.

AN EXAMPLE OF MY GIFFING PROWESS

TO THE JUICY PART (Also the part that is totally not interesting for any of my regular readers, dis for de googlers...)

Someone recently asked me how I go on about making all these GIF animations. Well, this one is for you. I use Gimp. This how-to requires you to have some prior knowledge of how Gimp looks and functions. It's similar to Photoshop in many ways, but it's free and stuff. I like it.

Anyway, the first thing you need to do is open Gimp, and when making a GIF, the smart thing to do is to go to File -> Open as Layers. Here, you select ALL the e.g. JPG's or PNG's you want in your animation, and press the red button (It's not actually red, but red buttons are much more dramatic.).

Alternatively, you would create all the layers separately. If thats the case, then just make the layers as you would make layers in a regular XCF file. Make sure all the layers are at 100% alpha all through, so no funky stuff happens. Generally, though, one uses premade pictures in GIFs, or atleast I do.

Now you have all your separate images as imported layers. The order goes as follows; The bottom-most layer, is the first layer that will appear in the animation. Thus, the topmost layer is the last. This is the order.

After having sequenced all the layers correctly, theres something else we need to do. We need to figure out the timings. How it works, is, every layer has a number in milliseconds, for which it will show, before the GIF  moves on to the next picture. This number is specified by adding a suffix of e.g. (100ms) to the layer name. If no number is specified, then a general value which you enter when saving the GIF will be used instead

So. Example.

These are my layers. I deducted that 250ms standard erh... showtime... would be suitable. As I wanted the first layer of the gif, ("FIRST(500ms)") to be longer than the rest, I gave it a 500ms suffix. I could also have duplicated the layer, in essence, making it be treated as 2 separate, but equal layers, to double the time which it will be showed in the animation. This, however, makes the file bigger. A (500ms) suffix doesnt.

Similarly, I also changed the timings for the blank layers.

The layers were created by just making a white layer, with a text layer over it. I merged those, then I hid the layer completely, and went on to the next frame. Simple stuff.

To see it in action before you save your gif, you can go to Filters -> Animation -> Playback. Its intuitive enough, I have faith in your figuring it out. (<- not a grammar mistake, just poetic license. Dont harp.)

And there it is. Beautiful. To save it, you go to File -> Export, and then, as a filename, enter filenamehere.gif. Hit export. This triggers a dialog. First, you may be told the picture has to be cropped. Press ok. Then, another window is sure to pop up. Fill in whatever you must, mark the "Save as Animation" box, make it "Loop forever", too. You'll also be prompted to write in a number in ms, as I wrote earlier. If you dont know what number is good, just go with something, and go view the result, then simply overwrite it with another, more appropriate value.


Gifs! You now know how I make them! It's probably not the most comfortable way to do it, but it gives me enough invoice into the process to satisfy my megalomanic needs for control.