Lady Jalae is a female gwil Aspect of the shapeshifting Lurin named Lukaud. They are also known as “Master of the Voidplane”, or Obmunjalae in a common gwil language. This Aspect has become their favorite, and most who know Jalae would best know them as this form.

In the background is a magic generator, a device that pulls in and concentrates the magical energy that permeates the Voidplane universe. This one belongs to Jalae and powers their home base. Also a glimpse of some experimenting with what the Voidplane “sky” looks like.

Showing off a bit of synchronicity between my digital and analog hobbies: I have used Blender to model and plan out my garden. From this screenshot you can have a better understanding of its layout. I just completed the eastern side on the right of the picture. I put in a little curve on the separation between the red rubber mulch pathway and the bed of decorative rock to account for the rounded edge of the big bed (and to keep things from being all right angles, I guess).

Not much posting going on here over the hot months. The bulk of my creative efforts has been directed towards the non-digital, especially the garden. It’s constantly evolving, starting with two beds in the first year in our house, but now having 12 square beds, a big bed (currently dominated by zucchini plants), a greenhouse, a row on the side of the greenhouse for outdoor pots, and a fire pit area. I’m currently working on the greenhouse-opposite side to set up another pot row and get it all decorated out. I have plans to build a shed on the end of the greenhouse, but it just got too hot for that level of construction. Next year I may also work on building a drip irrigation system for the entire garden (the greenhouse has such a system already) instead of relying on the existing lawn sprinklers.

I’m not completely avoiding digital creations – I just finished another run through the Sheshai the Purifier novel. Yet again, I found corrections and ideas to expand upon or better tell the story. No huge changes, though I did add mentions of another Great House, this one being the order of engineers called the House of the Hammer, bringing the total to six (Sword, Shield, Hand, Book, Eye, and Hammer). Doing 3D modeling here and there. I am working on something for the anniversary of this site switching to its current WordPress-powered form, which will happen in October.

Pride has been more meaningful to me this year, as my partner officially came out as bi recently. I am straight myself… well, I guess depending on the definition, eh Sheshai? Speaking of her, coming to terms with things has influenced my novel by a significant amount. Though it’s written primarily to appeal to my cis-het nature, I wound up writing in a number of characters that don’t adhere to the ‘norm’. I hope it doesn’t come off as pandering and instead comes across as coming from an honest place.

Just a few days ago I decided to update to the new 19.10 version of Ubuntu Linux. Along with that came the latest version of Blender – 2.8. This version is a huge overhaul and they changed some fundamental things like how texturing works. In other words, it broke all of my existing stuff. Am I going have to get an earlier version of Blender to figure out how to update the old settings to be compatible with the new system, or am I going to rebuild texturing from near-scratch? At least the bitmap images are still there, just have to re-associate them, but there’s going to be a lot of rebuilding to do. Most of my materials used procedural textures and so far it doesn’t look like there’s a way to quickly import them. On top of that I have to learn the new setup. I’ve been sick for at least a week so this is just making me a bit crankier.