OR La chanson des vieux amants... _{A dazzlingly lovely song by Jacques Brel, sung by Judy Collins back in the 60s...}

(...and various other thoughts on getting older...another ramble, so read this only if you're in a patient mood...or "feeling your age" yourself!)

Not that it's an issue for the great majority of us...but guess what, it does happen! (And GUESS WHAT, it's a lot better than you might think! )

I just turned 60 - don't know whether that means I'm already an "old lover" or (per my grandfather) that I will be, in another 15 years. (He used to say, at least once a year, "In 15 years I'll be old.")

Then there was my uncle: once upon a time when he was in his eighties, I answered a remark of his with, "I'm 43 - I'm not a kid anymore." He just looked at me...and looked at me...and finally smiled...and replied: "I am."

Nevertheless, the jump in the "tens digit" from age 59 (which seems to have lasted long enough) starts me thinking about stuff. Plus, I just sent off a note to a lady who is all of 32 (which, to some of you, is OLD!!!!!) reassuring her that REAL beauty does not fade, even if PRETTINESS sometimes does.

well, hey, real beauty DOESN'T fade. Even prettiness doesn't ALWAYS fade, though let's face it, sometimes it does. I just tried experimenting with a portrait of a lady who must be at least in her mid to late fifties [link] - granted, it takes some genetic luck to age quite as cutely as Pandora's Mamma has done.

Pandora's Mamma: Not just luck, caro mio. I DO take care of myself. Not like SOME of us our age...

The whole point of this journal is to repeat something I said to that nervous lady of newly 32, and I'm going to tell this to my girlfriend Janet too! (she's MY age):

At 60, my girlfriend and I move slower than we would have done long ago, but our LOVE is all the deeper.

Yup, it works that way. _{And FURTHERMORE, orgasms feel JUST as good, even if us males don't have QUITE so many of them at this age. Plus we can hold on longer...hey dude, didja ever come too soon for your lady? Get older!}

OK, all of this stuff means that I gotta say some more about sex!

Fwiw, any patience I feel toward ascetics and sex-haters of any age, is merely humane - hey, they're people too, in their way! God loves them TOO, IN SPITE of their deficiency, not BECAUSE of it. </rant>

I still post renders of some VERY sexy ladies. They are younger than I am, to be sure, because even I am not immune to the stereotype that young = sexually attractive. I appreciate women my own age...but hey, I appreciate women of ALL ages. I love the story of the 19th century archaeologist (wish I could remember his name) who died at 105 when he crashed his buggy after turning to look at a pretty girl. Hope I die that way!

I have recently wondered about the question of the Chronophontians getting older. For a long time I simply assumed that time does not pass in Chronophontia, and the ladies do not get physically older. But now Natasha has a baby on the way, and over the next six months or so (she started in July) her appearance is going to change. Then she'll have a baby, who will grow from infant to toddler to preschooler to...whatever, however long I keep rendering Chronophontians!

Not that I anticipate being 90 in the year 2039 and having a gallery full of late-middle-aged Chronophontians running around naked and being late-middle-aged sexy. (Plus Natasha's 29-year-old daughter presumably running around naked, presumably with more general success.) Let's face it, I have no idea what will happen between now and then. I don't even assume that I'll live that long!



The CSS for this journal was created with the help of the CSS Test at [link] . Thanks, Icyworlds!

That's the title of a book by the 1930s American linguist, Benjamin Lee Whorf. It's also what this ramble is about.

(Why do I give a @#$%^&? Because I love language and languages, and it's an eternal frustration to me that I've never mastered any except my own.)

One of the things about the Chronophontians that never ceases to fascinate me is that they are not all monolingual English speakers like I am. In fact, only one of them is...

all-American ME!!!!

Natasha is Russian, Jeannine is French (though not by any means a stereotypical French person), Euthanasia is Transylvanian (Romanian + Hungarian with a little German thrown in), and Shirley, though basically American by adoption, has been around for several thousand years and assures me that her native language is Etruscan. As for the non-core Chronophontians: Lisette, Jeannine's little sister, is French; Alyosha is Russian; and I'm not sure about anybody else's nationality, except that Nikita the Mouse, despite the Russian name Natasha gave him, hails from the New York/New Jersey waterfront - at least to judge by his very (regional) American accent. (Think of a countertenor Humphrey Bogart.)

Despite their wildly varied origins, I "hear" all of them in English.

Natasha, Jeannine, and Lisette "speak" to me with distinctive accents - and their English tends to be "correct" second-language English rather than the slangy, fully comfortable English of a native speaker. OTOH, Euthie, who never learned any English at all, "speaks" to me in slangy (not to say occasionally quite vulgar) American.

My theory is that Natasha, Jeannine and Lisette have learned excellent English - as a second language. And as a courtesy to their "medium" (me), they communicate with me in their very best English - complete with accent. OTOH, Euthie, who never wasted time on foreign languages, thinks in her own mix of Romanian and Hungarian - and it comes out to monolingual me in American.

This leads to the "reality" issue.

From a narrow, reductionist, materialist point of view, the Chronophontians are purely and simply and MERELY figments of Thomas Ahlswede's imagination.

Sure, they ARE figments of my imagination. But there is nothing MERE about them.

They are PEOPLE. They have their lives, which I strive to represent and present and celebrate for you (and for myself too, of course.) When I say my prayers, I pray for them just as I pray for my kids - though, to be sure, my kids come first.

Fiction writers will understand immediately: a good character has his/her own take on things, and will communicate it very effectively. If your character doesn't want to do something, she damn well WON'T do it. And you will feel like a fool insisting.

The Chronophontians are like that. They are PEOPLE. They provide the ideas; I'm just "A. Mouse Clicker." As a person brought up in the (basically materialist) tradition of science, I sometimes let slip that "they aren't real"...but I get quickly corrected on that!

Yer damn tootin. Where does he get off with that IDIOT notion?

Not that A. Mouse Clicker doesn't have power. Hey, folks, I click the mouse...or I don't! If I don't like an idea suggested by one of the girls, the mouse doesn't get clicked.

Isn't there some way to make him automatic?



The CSS for this journal was created with the help of the CSS Test at [link] . Thanks, Icyworlds!

Summer was too @#$%^& short. My classes start tomorrow. Standing up and talking in class, of course - but also prepping, writing handouts, grading homework, advising, going to meetings, etc. etc. etc. ad inf. ad naus. ... but I'll be doing as much at dA as I can!

And at his other site too!

Now, a mini-review of Poser 8!

Overall I'm highly pleased. In stark contrast to Poser 6 and 7, it works (almost) right away! I've installed it on three machines since Friday, and had problems with each one, no surprise...different problems on each machine...but in each case, it does what I want it to do within hours rather than months.

That's a contrast, because although Poser 6 and 7 installed and ran smoothly, there were problems that made them unusable for me until the first service release came out. Applause to Smith Micro!

(More specifically, if anyone is curious: Poser 6's animation palette was unacceptably slow before SR1, and OpenGL didn't work for me at all. In Poser 7, OpenGL "worked", but there were bizarre distortions in the previews.)

Also, as with another person who was having trouble with P8, Smith Micro responded VERY promptly. (My problem was trivial, my bad. I was using the wrong serial number. )

The interface looks different from previous Posers. From the little I know of DAZ|Studio, Poser has aimed for some of DAZ's look and feel. But it's still very much the traditional Poser interface, so I was able to use it almost immediately. I'll probably be discovering minor differences for months to come, but they are minor. Some are annoying, but most are improvements.

So, 4-1/2 stars for Poser 8!

Let's keep these features for a little longer:

~CheerBearsFan



=PetraR123








The CSS for this journal was created with the help of the CSS Test at [link] . Thanks, Icyworlds!

Time for some new features!

~CheerBearsFan



=PetraR123






A look at my gallery stats will show that summer, especially July and August, have been peak times for me. They have been this summer too, but not entirely at dA.

At least one of the Chronophontians has always chafed at certain restrictions that dA has always maintained (quite reasonably IMO).

Reasonably, huh? Well, we knew this dude was a wimp...

Now, I like erotic material. ("Porn", folks.) My personal rule has nothing to do with whether there is penetration or bodily fluids or etc. ad inf. ad naus. - I happen to think those things are excellent and beautiful. I draw the line at consent. You will never see serious violence - rape or other - in this gallery, even hinted at, unless it is clearly about to be foiled before it starts to happen. However, some people (including the powers that be) see the thing more mechanically than I do.

Specifically, dA is not a "porn" site, whatever that means...whatever it means to the U.S. government, under whose jurisdiction dA survives. "Porn", for dA's purposes, is defined fairly precisely in the FAQ ( [link] ).

Our dear Pandora is not the first deviant to find this restriction objectionable. (Not to mention that there are problems of interpretation - some pieces get away with it while others are unfairly discriminated against. I agree that there is injustice, but I'm an old man with a lifetime behind me of learning to suffer fools lightly. And the dA admins are a damn sight less foolish than some that I've suffered lightly!)

In any case, Tom (me) is the one who does the mouse clicking around here! If dA says it's porn, or some admin (if only under pressure from one of the more obnoxious people who sneak into dA) is significantly likely to say it's porn, I won't post it...here.

But he WILL post it. _{Took him long enough.}

As dA is quick to point out, there are alternative sites where explicitly erotic material may be displayed. Under one of (IMO) one of the less reasonable rules, I'm not supposed to give you a link to where I have agreed (to Pandora's pressure?) to post those scenes. But I'm a law-abiding "deviant" _{(whatever THAT is?????????????????????????????????????????)} so, technically, I won't.

The following list is extremely short, not because there aren't lots of sites out there, but because I haven't explored very many. Just enough for my own purposes.
(And it will simplify your search, if you just happen to be searching, ya perv )

- Renderotica (primarily 3D)
- RaunchyMinds (various, but primarily 3D)
- EroticArtists (primarily painting and drawing)
- HentaiFoundry (primarily anime/manga fan art)

Hiya, "pervs"! See ya there!



The CSS for this journal was created with the help of the CSS Test at [link] . Thanks, Icyworlds!

(inspired by a nice technical question by ~defense2 [link] )

I'm always impressed when 3D artists talk about elaborate workflows: a little in Maya, a little in 3DS Max, a little in Blender, a little in Lightwave, a little in Vue, a little in Poser or DAZ|Studio, and THEN, just maybe, a little postwork in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. I'm always impressed with what they say, and usually impressed with what they achieve.

I do it in Poser 7 and Photoshop. Period. And sometimes the simplicity shows.

I don't know if I could cope with that complexity! A common refrain among people with elaborate workflows is how long it takes...and my little workflow takes ME long enough!

Part of it is laziness. I've been using Poser since Poser 4 back around 2000, and Photoshop for three or four years, so I know those two tools very well. I used to do my postwork in Paint Shop Pro, but I got good at Photoshop simply from having to teach it! - and found that it had a few very useful features that PSP didn't have. (Mainly the "liquify" filter, for simple warping to smooth odd corners or to repair those awful Victoria 4 shoulder and hip joints.)

OTOH, though I have access to both Photoshop 7 and CS3, I still use 7 for most of my postwork - whatever new goodies CS3 has, I haven't found a "need" for them yet. I have (oldish versions of) 3DS Max and Bryce, but have never bothered to get good at them.

And even after nine years working with Poser, there are big areas I haven't even begun to explore. I've played a little with IBL (image based lighting) and ambient occlusion - I've seen some folks get awesome lighting effects with those, but mine are still not worth the trouble. And one that frankly embarrasses me: I've never yet written a Python script for Poser, and I'm a professional programmer! Oh well...someday. (True Kinky Confession for the day.)


Let's keep these features for a little longer: