Spam is shameless, but I was willing to do it today. My brother suggested that it is the only way to get a job. I use my skills (programming) and honed new skills (Perl) to achieve this task, something that sets me apart from other prospective employees. It reduced the work of sending resumes by many times. While the idea of spam is technically wrong, used correctly, I do not believe that many people would fault me for it. I have been out of work for 4 years. That is too long. My debts are huge. So I went against my philosophy of not making a nuisance of myself and sent 100 emails in 15 minutes (10 seconds hard coded sleep between each send). Since I didn't route them through any single server, it could not hurt anyone directly. However, I have no idea whether it will have negative effects. Spam is assumed to be -- if not illegal -- immoral. But while situations like phishing, 419 scams, pornography, and male enhancement are very easy to condemn, getting a job is a totally different question. If I get a job from this, will spam be justified in the case of poor people looking for money? Not many people on slashdot are very sympathetic to a hacker who wrote software to exploit open relays. Slashdot is usually very kind to hackers. Why not Fahrenheit? Well, that is not very different from what I did. I wrote software that exploited corporation's lack of protection against open relays (specifically my own linux workstation running sendmail) and sent one e-mail to each corporation. I didn't even put a disclaimer at the bottom. Who needs a spam disclaimer when businesses ask for contact from prospective employees? This is the nature of e-mail: when you post your e-mail, you are inviting people to e-mail you. While you certainly don't invite people to talk about your miniscule reproductive organ, there is nothing beyond morals that stops a person. There it is! _MORALS_ -- In capital letters, it loses some credibility, no? That is because spam loves capital letters. While most netizens understand netiquette, newbies (n00bs) and assholes love to abuse netiquette. Is there a point to my current rant? Here it is plain and simple:

Spam is bad when people do it to you.
You do not spam 
because you do not need the money.

When someone has 
a legitimate reason to spam, 
does that make them bad?

It's almost a pair of haiku. I'd like to publish the source and data of my resume spammer so that other job seekers can use it. I will do that when the code is organized enough to use.

Today, I also did some work on philosophy. I wrote a paper about how philosophy is getting an unfair brush-off in our society. It is an intro into a website that I want to create which allows people to publish their philosophical papers and receive peer review. There are a thousand things I must do before I create that website, though.

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Today, I also worked on the picture above. Click on the (Lo) button on the left for both versions. Here is the true lesson of the day: it is possible to create a manga without drawing in pencil and paper. It is different, but achieves a similar end result.

While pencil and paper give a very interesting natural look (pressure increases and decreases depending on the hand that draws it), hand drawn is rarely the end result. For web manga, a person will often digitally edit it partially if not totally. Different methods of digitization I use are: vector graphics, raster graphics with pencil, pen, and paintbrush. Each have their own unique pro/con list. I would say that pencil for structure outline (which allows fill) and then pen for finished outline (which involves anti-aliasing).

The method that I plan to use to create a manga without pencil and paper follows:

1. Start with a page that is 300 dpi (300% larger than you plan to be).
   You can do print resolution and anti-aliasing for web resolution.
   If you really want to develop in 100 dpi, it's your choice and your doom.
2. Draw guidelines with 1 px pencil on a layer above the background.
   This includes skeletons, box shapes, and such.
   It's on it's own layer so that you can get rid of it easily.
3. Draw the structure with 1-3 px pencil.
   The outline of the face, facial features, and everything that exists should be drawn.
   3 px pencil allows it to be the correct size when scaled to the correct size.
4. Give each object's outline it's own layer.
   That way you can edit one object without having to redo the others in the way.
5. Edit the outline until it is correct. Then save and backup the final structure outline.
   You'll never know when you'll need to revert a part to it's original. Keep it just in case. It also allows an artist to look to the past for an indication of progress.
6. Create a duplicate layer of the outline layer below the outline layer. Fill each with the color needed.
7. Delete the outline on the fill layer.
   This way you can create a good looking outline with pen.
8. Create a new layer on top of the fill layer for the pen outline.
9. Draw the pen outline. Try to make it smooth and correctly shaped.
   There are a bunch of options for pen, so be sure to think about it and try a few different settings.
10. Hide the pencil outline layer.
    This should leave the fill and the pen outline. It should look right.
11. Cel Shade the filled areas as necessary.

Text is much better digital than on pen and paper. There is no reason why manga cannot be better digitally also. The tools that digital production gives are quite amazing, so use them wisely. Blur is indeed your friend, I always like blurring and then switching to 4-16 indexed colors. That gives a smooth curve where there was a jagged edge or straight edge before. There are many tricks and many tools for the digital manga-ka, so think about it.

Don't imagine that I will use the above technique on Javantea's Fate. I'm set on using 3D. However, I do have a project that I am ready to use this technique on. It's called "Solution Fusion", but I won't go into it. I have too many ideas that are on the back burners right now.

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