Rant of Ferox

Hmm, I won an award. That must mean I’ve done something clever. Lucent Dusk must think so anyway.

Lucent Dust is a regular Entrecard dropper, which is where most of you reading this will have come from too. I feel flattered that somebody out there actually likes these words of mine, because after all that’s what I write for.

But it’s not a free lunch. There’s a handful of standard rules that go along with this award.

• You may display the award on your blog.
• Add a link to the person who presented you the award.
• Nominate up to seven other blogs.
• Add their links to your blog.
• Let those you nominated know they won!

So to play by the rules, here’s a handful of some favourite blogs for this week.

In Shadows is an Etsy Artist’s blog. I like her organ jewelry and am patiently awaiting my purchase in the mail. I only wish she’d post more about her own creations when she ads them to her shop.

How is Bradley is another blog that I read casually but have never yet commented on. He’s already won this award once, but I’m sure he wont mind having another one.

My third choice is Saving Moki. I can’t help being pulled along by this blog and the story of a sick but persistant cat and his determined owners.

 I think three is enough off the top of my head. These awards get around to everybody eventually, so don’t be concerned if I forgot you after seven hours of lectures on a monday afternoon.

Here’s more concept art, for a water spirit this time. There are two versions, one with a background and one without. Using a background makes it easier to hide my mistakes, but sometimes I think it detracts from the picture.  

Using no background on the other hand gives a clearer impression of the creature.

I wrote this when I was about 16, and looking back now I still think it’s an okay piece. It’s surprising how well you can summarise an epic story in just a handfl of paragraphs. Please share your thoughts.

Sometimes I wonder why I started going on my big adventure. I suppose my memory is helped by the fact that I had written it down. I didn’t want to waste my like living on a farm doing nothing with my precious life, I wanted to make something, do something or be someone. That’s right, I wanted to be someone. I was good at writing, so I decided to write down my heroic adventures so that they would be never lost. So much for that idea, although if you’re reading this, perhaps they aren’t lost. Perhaps they’re found. If so then it must be a long time from now, and I doubt I’m still alive. If I am it’s a miracle, and in that case this page will probably be burnt, you draw your own conclusions, reader.

I wrote down my life, but I’d read enough books to know that it needed a plot. Sadly, growing up on the farm never gave me a plot. The worst villain that could be found was the chicken stealing fox, or the manure heap. So I left home in search of adventure.

It’s ironic, I found and lost friends on my journey, saw things die, saw things being created. In all that wonder and magic I still managed to get tired of it all, and my quest to find adventure away from home turned into me just trying to get back home, that’s all I want now. I want to be back home. By the sun and moon, I want to be back home.

This is it, maybe the last words I write. Maybe not, perhaps it’s true that heroes never die, although they do seem to disappear.

I pour my life into my words, for I am,

Ryter

You only realise you’re addicted to something once it’s gone. No doubt hundreds of bloggers are feeling serious Entrecard withdrawal symptoms since the card-dropping system has been down for about 24 hours.  So what can you do with all this new found free time?

• Write a blog post. So many Entrecrd blogs haven’t updated in weeks, now is your chance!
• Pre-write more blog posts. For those of us with important events coming up, it always helps to have a little something extra saved away to keep a blog active.
• Post on forums. Go on, meet new people, visit their blogs, drop a comment and interact with a whole new bunch of people.
• Join yahoo! answers and be helpful. You might even be able to drop a useful link.
• Check to see if Entrecard is working yet.
• Re-design your blogs to optimize ad clicks.
• Submit to some directories. Remember the whole ‘backlinks are important’ beliefs you used to have before Entrecard?
• Search Google for the keywords you covet. Just how well are you doing?
• Check Entrecard again.
• Play with the kids or fur-kids. Remember them?
• Go for a walk outside. Remember outside? Count 300 steps if it makes you feel better.
• Play monopoly.
• Talk with your significant other (No, Entrecard is not a ’significant other’)
• Find a significant other.
• Sneak a peek at Entrecard once more, just in case it’s back online.
• Fantasize about the bargain prices your favourite blogs are going to have because nobody has bought an ad on them for days.
• Stress about your blog’s ad price because nobody has bought an ad from you for days!
• Wonder if you might be addicted to Entrecard.
• Look at some lolcats.
• Look at Entrecard one more time.
• Cry yourself to sleep.
• Wake up, repeat process all over again.

Hooked, much?

I wish I was refering to rifles and shooting down spam-bots. No, i’m talking about how downright bizarre seem to be.

Let’s be honest, half of them are just a stack of links which aren’t even formatted corrently to appear as actual links, rather than code, if the comment got published.

Others are half a sentance in bold, with their link listed as their website. Just half a sentance. Barely three words.

Gibberish spam seems to be popular these days also. Perhaps they’re hoping that if their comment makes no sence whatsoever and I can’t understand it’s meaning, I’ll forgive the seven links contained within it and publish it hoping someone else will shed some light. Yeah right.

They’re all about poker, strip poker, casinos, lopez, bad credit, lopex playing strip poker with bad cedit and some guy who wants me to visit his make-money site all because he used to drive with a rusty muffler. That relates to canine pyometra how exactly? Dogs don’t have rusty mufflers, my anatomy book says so.

Oh, and le piece de resistance is that some of these spam comments I’ve been getting, are in French.

Merci les Salopes.