The Messengers of Yesh Web Address

Friday, February 22, 2019

Stuck in the Slow Lane Part 2

My internet speed is capped at 1.5Mbps. Not 15, 1.5(one point five). My ISP promised me many times that my switch was on the list to be upgraded before they finally admitted that it wasn't on the list. Every once in a while, I'll blog bemoaning my internet speed woes and how the real solution is either wireless or moving somewhere else. Customers close to me have 100Mbps speeds while I suffer.

I've never publicly outed my ISP. I've never ranted and called them names. However, something has changed for the better. It's time to name my ISP for all the world to see. It's Windstream. Windstream is the company who received a $175 million grant to upgrade my switch and didn't do it. Windstream is the company who was petitioning the state of Georgia for another grant to upgrade my switch and never has. Hang on. The good news is coming.

Windstream is greedy. I don't consider them to be evil the way Comcast is, if you know anything about that company. I just know they care more about money than their customers. That's okay now. I ran across an amazing news story this week.

Winstream promised to upgrade my switch for years, lying to me and not keeping their word. It turns out that's a pattern with them. Here's the article:

Death For Windstream And Pain For Uniti

Oh, dear. Windstream made a legal promise in writing not to do something and then did it anyway. They got sued and lost. Now, they're dead. Maybe the new owners will fulfill Windstream's federal grant obligations and actually do some upgrades instead of pocketing the money.

Let's not count our chickens, though. Windstream lost the court case, but they do get an appeal. It's theoretically possible they could wiggle out of this. If not, they will possibly owe $5.83 Billion that will have to be paid immediately. That will be the end of Windstream and a new dawn for suffering customers.

Will the new owners upgrade my switch? I have no idea. I won't be living here by then.


Original Post: Stuck in the Slow Lane.


Friday, February 15, 2019

Cover Workaround 2

Picking up from last week, I was testing digital art programs like Gimp, Paintstorm, Krita, etc., trying to find something I can use to make real, illustrated book covers. I already had Corel Painter Lite but wanted something more robust. After researching and sleeping on it, the answer was clear. I needed Corel Painter. But it was too expensive. Then I had a brilliant idea. Why not upgrade Painter Lite to Painter 2019? Corel won't let just anything upgrade, though. So I checked the list of ineligible programs. Painter Lite was not on it. Yay! Unfortunately, it turned out they still wouldn't let me do it. That just proves that not all brilliant ideas work in practice.

I ended up buying a cheap copy of Corel Painter 2017 on Amazon. Once I did that, Corel started sending me emails to upgrade it offering me a discount off the normal upgrade price. Interesting but too expensive. However, inside the 2017 program was a $99 upgrade offer, which is about 75% off the normal price and much better than their upgrade discount. I ended up doing that instead. I wound up getting Painter 2019 for less than the cost of the normal upgrade price much less the full price. Now all I have to do is figure out how to use it. It has some awesome features I wouldn't have had with just 2017. I'm excited to use them. One of those is thick paint. I can't wait. I've never been able to justify the cost of a set of heavy body acrylics. It should be fun.

While waiting for the Painter 2017 DVD to get here, I practiced with Painter Lite. At first it was horrible. Then I got a sky that looked like a painted sky and not a digital art sky. As I mentioned last week, all these painting programs advertise themselves as being like painting but on the computer, and that is nonsense. I didn't explain. Here's one example. In real life, yellow is a transparent color. To get a strong yellow, you have to use multiple layers or add something like titanium white to it or paint a white layer where the yellow goes, etc. In the painting programs, yellow is a solid color. None of the colors that are transparent in real life are transparent in these programs. Instead, what they've done is make it the opposite of real life. Rather than the digital paint acting like real paint, they've put the transparency into the brushes as a setting that can be changed. Yes, it's quite cumbersome. I'll probably end up creating a set of brushes with transparent properties. Once I learn how to do that.

Another problem is blending colors. It doesn't work like it does in real life. It looks like what I'll have to do is fiddle with settings until I can get something that is more true to life. Or I may create a huge palette of carefully blended colors based on my real life palette that I can work from. The ability to create a palette was an important factor for choosing Corel over the free programs.

What I need to do now is get under the hood and figure out how all the settings work to get the program to be as much like real painting as I can get it. I couldn't get Painter 2017 to make a sky like I could in Painter Lite, so I'm kind of starting over with the full version. From here it's just a matter of learning and figuring things out. It's a mental shift. I'm going to have to try to see the program as a separate way of painting and just accept it for what it is, instead of expecting it to work like real painting.

The final problem is my graphics tablet. I got a Wacom Bamboo in 2011 for $56 on sale. The active area for drawing is 5.8"x3.6"(147mmx91mm). When I was doing my testing in Lite and 2017, I was using a 640x480 canvas, which is pretty small but large enough to tinker with. I couldn't make a line across the canvas with such a small tablet. It also doesn't have a screen. I have to draw with the tablet while looking at my monitor. I went off the edge of the active area a lot. Looking at the monitor while drawing on the tablet wasn't a problem. The problem was the small active area. The canvas size for a book cover is going to be larger than 640x480, so, though I can get more used to it, the problem won't get better or go away.

Ideally, I'd like a tablet with a screen that I can draw on directly. However, those tend to be expensive. I can get a very decent one with no screen, but if I have to paint book covers and other concept art over the long term, I really need a screen. I prayed about the painting program, and it all fell into place for a fraction of the normal price. I'm praying about this, too. I wouldn't mind some extra prayers. :)

I'd also like to request some prayer for a friend who's having mental health problems. I was talking to her this week, and suddenly it was like one of those television movies where a person seems normal then suddenly changes and starts talking about something no one else understands. I tried to be calming and rational, but it just made it worse instead of helping. At first I wondered if it was something I'd said, but it wasn't. There have been previous indications that something was wrong. She needs prayer.

I don't know how long it's going to take me to get up to speed and produce something that isn't bad, but I'll probably be uploading some test pieces along the way. I have a book of landscape exercises. I was thinking about trying those, once I solve the blending problem. They might not be the greatest, but it would show my progress better than just describing it.

Have a great weekend.

Friday, February 8, 2019

Cover Workaround?

AoE is basically ready to go, but I need a cover for it. The last time I checked, a professionally illustrated cover would cost between $500 and $1,500. That's not an option, especially with the other books needing better covers as well. I can paint. I can even paint things that aren't bad, but there's a difference between a painting and a cover illustration.

I had this hope that I could paint a cover and then go over the painting with painting pens or perhaps use the pens along the way. I hoped that would give me illustration-type details that are extremely time-consuming to achieve with brushes. I bought a few pens. They're useful but limited. For a painting I need to mix custom colors. The pens can't do that. Basing the colors around the pen colors isn't the best option, as I would be limited in what I could do.

Maybe I have an idea that could work. I have a drawing tablet that I picked up on sale for $56.99 back in 2011. It came with Corel Painter Essentials 4, which I don't have installed on my current PC. At some other time I picked up Corel Painter Lite, which I do have installed. I got the tablet out this week and messed around with Painter Lite. Unhappy with it, I ended up downloading some other painting programs. I'm not thrilled with any of them, though Paintstorm Studio has a lot of nice brushes.

The main problem I have is these programs advertise themselves as bringing painting to the computer, but none of them seem to do that. Of the programs I've tried so far, only Corel Painter Lite has actual artist colors like cadmium red, ultramarine blue, etc. The problem with that program is I can't seem to be able to create and save a palette. I have a standard set of colors I use for painting that I use to blend custom colors. I need those colors on a palette. The way it's set up, I would have to create a new palette for every painting. Unless I'm missing something. There's no Create Palette option. Maybe it's in the full version. They don't even call it a palette. It's swatches. No painter calls a palette swatches.

The full version of Corel Painter is $399, although older versions are much cheaper on Amazon. Maybe that would work. Or maybe I need something like CorelDRAW, which is geared toward illustration. That program is even more expensive than Painter and not a real option.

I'm still trying to figure out something that will work. It's possible I could put some colors at the top of a real canvas, take a picture of it and use that as my palette in one of these programs. At the end of the painting, I could crop the top off and voilà. It's also possible I could manually enter the RGB values for the paints. Maybe I could paint a painting and then tweak it in a program.

Using the drawing tablet is its own headache. Maybe I just need to get used to it. The colors don't blend in any of the programs I've tried the way real paint does. They try to fake it, but the limitations are going to take getting used to. It's more like drawing than painting.

Maybe I'm on the verge of coming out with a great, new set of covers or maybe not. I need to find the right tool and figure out how to make it work the way it's advertised. I've seen tons of computer art. Nearly all of it looks like cheap, fake computer art. If I could get the right palette and the right program, I think I can avoid that cheap, fake look.

Have a great weekend.




Friday, February 1, 2019

The Rising Price of Data

As I've mentioned several times, my ISP received a $175 million grant from the federal government to upgrade internet speed for its customers. They upgraded some places and appear to have pocketed the rest of the money. I'm stuck at 1.5Mbps with no other options. I followed wireless data plans for a short while. Prices were trending lower, but it was a very slow process. When I decided to come back and check it later, it was down to $130/mo for 30GB of data, which is about what I was using at the time. That price was too high to make it worth it. Once it dropped to below around $100/mo, it would almost be competitive with my ISP, which forces me to bundle phone service.

I recently bought a 4G phone that got me to looking at data again. Prices have gone up. 30GB is now $185/mo. 40GB is $260/mo. 60GB is $410/mo. Notice that two 30GB accounts would be cheaper than one 60GB account. $370/mo vs $410/mo. That's through Verizon.

Per GB, it looks like this:
30GB = $6.17/GB
40GB = $6.50/GB
60GB = $6.83/GB

It gets worse. In addition to getting a new phone, I switched phone companies to Red Pocket, an MVNO. As part of my search for a new company, I looked at a lot of MVNOs, including Straight Talk. If you're not familiar with MVNOs, they resell phone service from the big carriers but at a discount. Instead of paying something like $100/mo, you can find plans starting around $10/mo. That's with limited minutes, etc., of course. It depends on what you need. Straight Talk has an unlimited plan for $55/mo that includes 60GB of Verizon data.

Per GB, it looks like this:
60GB = 92 cents/GB

So, 60GB of data from Verizon costs $6.83/GB at $410/mo. But that exact same data on Verizon through Straight Talk costs 92 cents/GB at $55/mo. If a Verizon reseller can sell data for less than a dollar a GB, that tells me data costs Verizon nothing. The 4G network is completely paid for, as we already knew. It's all profit now. Cell phones and data plans are all on the same network. The cell phone plans and data plans are both cellular data. There's no difference between my having a phone using data versus having a computer using data. One costs a fortune, and the other is next to free. AT&T is similarly evil.

With 5G rolling out, 4G data should be dropping in price one would think. My electric company was supposed to offer 1Gbps internet where I live, but they reneged on their promise. I was supposed to get a 15Mbps plan for $34.05/mo. I'm less than a mile from their fiber line. It's very saddening.

Ah, well. The data quest continues.

Have a great weekend.