I contacted Kim about making a comic and proposed some ideas. We're both very excited about the project. We chose an idea and started developing it. So far we have the prologue written. I need to lay out the pages and start drawing the characters. I got some help referencing the period costumes from Rhys. More on that soon!
Two weeks in a row now Evan and I have gone to the gym, so I guess we'll be going at least once a week. It's great going to the gym with a partner. It was nice going to the gym with Laura, we'd do the elliptical or treadmill together, and weights. Evan and I do our own thing for a while, me on the elliptical for half an hour, he on the various weight machines, then we row for ten minutes, and do some other exercises, like tossing a medicine ball around.
Jenn told me we need to get our split time down on the rowing machine. That is, how quickly we can row 500 metres. 1:40, I believe she said, is what we should be able to do.
Some time in October (originally in September, actually) Laura and I are planning on going to Toronto to look at areas we might want to move to. Evan will be joining us, as he has been meaning to visit for a while now. I can't wait to wander around Toronto again, and this time with a guide!
I wanted to get into a drawing class this semester, both to get more drawing time in my life, as well as to have a fourth class, making me full-time and eligible for financial aid. I didn't get in, unfortunately, and ended up staying in the class I had registered for as a placeholder, The Language of the Web. It turns out it's not nearly as bad as I was expecting, though it is still aimed at people new to web design (which baffles me, it's a 400 level course). The prof, (who got the class a week and a half before the semester started) Andrew Forster, I actually had in first year and was hoping to have another class with. I'll have to come up with a more self-directed project that gives me a greater challenge than the course would normally offer. I have no idea, so far, what that will be. Maybe making a 3D site. Fancy!
Another class I have is Print: Meaning and Process. It's supposed to be about making and preparing documents for printing, and understanding the various print processes. So far, and likely entirely, this class is in fact a typography class. This may be for the better. Last semester I had a typography class with Chris Moore, but that was more focused on individual letters and words, where as this class is more concerned with whole typographical layouts. The prof for this class is Nathalie Dumont. I've heard so many things about her as a teacher before taking the class, but those opinions seem much more telling about the students than the teacher. She is more subjective than I would like, but at least she gives a very strong opinion, and most often actually backs it up. Teaching typography must be difficult, as it is a very subjective matter.
My third class is 3D Design Technologies which is, in a way, a continuation of 3D Digital Concepts, which I took with Erwin Regler. Where that class was about learning the CAD software before using the hardware to produce the object, this class is about the production and the variety of machines to use in production. This class is taught by Martin Racine. He gave a speech in first year, when he was head of the design department, which gave us a pretty bad impression of him. His English was also terrible at the time. He is much better than I expected, and his English has greatly improved.
Finally, my last class for this semester is Discursive Design Research I. This class is required, otherwise I likely would not take it. The teacher is Rhona Richman Keneally (RRK). I had her for Design History & Theory I back in first year. Her teaching methods are condescending and time consuming, targeting the lowest common denominator. At the beginning of the first class this semester she stated, "If you think you know me from first year, you don't know me at all." This gave me the slightest, skeptical bit of relief. It was a complete and utter lie. She hasn't changed a damn bit. During the lecture part of class she'll ask questions about the readings to students who obviously haven't read them. They sit in awkward and shamed silence, or murmur and stammer in pitiful attempts to grasp at the barest information to be found in the selected quotes projected on the screen. This wastes a good 15 of class. It's absurd, detrimental to those of us who are there to get a degree in design, and not just take up space in a class because we don't know what else to do.
Overall I am happy with my classes, and excited to see what's to come. As I only need 6 classes worth of DART credits to graduate, and I'm taking four now, I may very only take two classes in the winter semester, making me a part-time student, and work part-time, or ideally work for Arun and 9M9 more often and more consistently.
I need to get the 9M9 site finished and ready to upload this weekend. It's been... a month or two short a year, I believe, since I started working on it, and it has yet to see the light of day (the public Internet). Part of that is because Arun and his partner have been really slow to act with it, giving clients preference over their own site; but I am also definitely to blame for not working very fast, again giving preference to just about everything else in my life.