A Confession

So I have a confession to make. I've never been a huge fan of music. I like music, it's not something I dislike, but keeping up with it and learning about it and collecting it has never been something I've been interested in or have wanted to spend my time on. I also love silence. When I go for too long of a time with constant noise, I just get irritated! I need time where I can just listen to the normal sounds around me, devoid of music and TV and other inturruptions. I don't know why this is... I never made the choice to detatch myself from music and the music community. It's just an interest that never really developed within me, and continues to be low-key and uninterested.

Anyway, that said, I have a very interesting dilemma. As many of you know, the only thing I can multitask with (as far as I know) is drawing. I love drawing and painting in silence, or having a TV playing in the background, or talking with someone while I draw; it's like while my eyes are focused on creating my ears and mouth are free to focus on other things. While working on traditional peices I can sit for hours and hours just drawing and listening, whether there is silence around me or otherwise. However, when I'm on the computer this focus for some reason crumbles. I have such a strong desire to create digital work, but I just can't keep up the focus for it to happen. The internet distracts me, or my mind wanders to a thought so interesting that I break from my work; often times I can only draw for a mere 15 minutes before dropping it altogether. That is, unless...

You guessed it. Unless I'm listening to music.

There is this artist that goes by the internet name "Neon Dragon." She often does live streams of herself drawing in photoshop, complete with a musical track to suppliment her work. Her stuff is popular and decent but not fantastic; she created the common "How to Draw Dragons" artbook that I'm sure you guys have seen at Borders and Barnes and Noble. Anyway, whenever I find her streaming I often don't even watch her; instead after five minutes I really want to draw so I open up photoshop and get to work while her music streams in the background. Guess what happens? Well shit, I can't stop drawing! My mind is satisfied listening to her music while my eyes and hands are busy creating.

This leaves me in an interesting predicament. Do I go through the trouble of collecting a music library for my own artistic purposes when my actual interest in the process is low? Or do I just keep on doing what I'm doing? Hmm.

Anyway, this is a lot of text and no pictures. Here, have a dinosaur update: (Bigger image here: http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Rikkoshaye/Rex-Half-Color.jpg )

Not so sure about the collar, but I'm afraid people might be too daft to get the connection without it. Also not so sure on the tree coloring yet. Any input?

Yttrium

Congrats little dude, you made it! :D

So, Yttrium is changing into an adult salamander.

*deep breath*

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!

His eyes, which were flat against his head, have started bugging out, and his tail fin has been getting much smaller. His gills have been shrinking, and he walks on his little legs more like a salamander does, with his elbows stuck out instead of laying flat against his sides. Xenon has been shedding (salamanders shed, did you know?) and his belly is lightening up quite a bit. I think that means he will be changing soon too! Zinc is still quite small so I think he has a ways to go. :)

I've been moving along on my T-shirt design as well, but I haven't been able to work on it as much as I'd like due to work and retarded coworkers who just quit without letting anyone know.

It's not nearly close to being finished but I fixed some of the anatomical problems and I'm playing around with the markings. Since Blogger didn't allow people to click on the image before, here is a link to a larger version of Rex: Click Me!

Any suggestions from you guys? If anything looks weird just let me know and I'll see if I can play around with it. :)

Otherwise, just a short post for right now I guess... 13 more days until I can come home! :D

Animal Personalities

The fact that animals have personalities has always been something that is very interesting to me. If you've observed a few animals for more than 5 minutes it becomes obvious that no two creatures are alike; they all have their own actions and quirks that are unique to them, much like humans. Assuming that animals have no sense of self (something that seems true but no one really knows for sure) it's pretty cool that beings that primarily react to the world and their bodily needs still have room for uniqueness. It shows that not all personality traits come from what us humans posess; perhaps our quirks are meerly amplified by our sense of self and do not originate from that part of us? Anyway, I digress.

Because I've had my salamanders for more then 10 days now, their personalities have been appearing! Zinc, the little guy, is the most active of the bunch. He zooms around the cage and bumps into the other critters, and likes to park in the corners and swim up and down with his nose against the glass.

Xenon is definitely the most intelligent. It only took him a few days to realize that "the big pink human" is the thing that gives him food. Whenever I come close to the cage he swims up to the side of the glass and looks at me, and when I put my hand in the water he'll swim up to it and push his nose against my fingers looking for food. This of course doesn't happen if he can't see me, but most of the time he does. :)

Yttrium is the most antisocial. He generally hides behind the fake plants a lot, and sticks to the back of the cage. However, when Xenon was busy exploring my hand today he did come up to explore as well; I'm sure he will become more friendly as time goes on. What silly pets. :)

All three of them like to swim against the current in the aquarium (created by my bubbler as it pours water into the tank) and they all seem to enjoy parking themselves on top of the plants and just sitting there. (Especially Yttrium and Xenon.) Unfortunately they all like taking nips at each other's tails as well, and Zinc has a chunk missing so I'm not so happy about that. Hopefully if I feed them enough they won't do it too often though! I'm also not sure of their genders yet, though once they mature it'll be easy to tell. So, even though I'm calling them all "he" right now they could all very well become "she"! We'll see what happens. :)

I'm also working on another T-shirt design. This one is sort of a play off the dog name "Rex." It's far from finished but here is the outline so far (you can click on it for a larger version):

It is going to be holding a tree in it's mouth and I want to make the expression more confused then it already is. Also, T-Rex feet have an additional back digit so I'll have to fit that in somehow... anyway, that's about all.

Only 20 more days until I come home! Who wants to hang out? ;D

Xenon, Yttrium, and Zinc

So I've finally come up with the names for my Salamanders. After thinking on it for a few days I decided to name them after some elements on the periodic table because, well, elements are cool! :) My first two choices were Zinc and Zirconium, with the possibilities of Tungsten, Xenon, Argon, and a few others. After mentioning it to Chad he said it was too bad I didn't have three little critters, because then I could name them Xenon, Yttrium, and Zinc. (X, Y, Z!) This seemed so cool to me that I couldn't quite let it go, and yep, you guessed it: I bought another little salamander.

This pretty much made the purchase of a new tank nessisary! So, I went out to walmart and picked up a nice 14 gallon glass tank. I definitely don't have the room for it but I placed it on the floor; right now it is cycling water and getting everything oxygenated for when I add X, Y, and Z.

So here are a few more pictures of Zinc (the little guy), Xenon (aka Fatty, the large dark one) and Yttrium (the large light one.) Only one more day and they'll be in their new, big cage! Hurray!

I really need to find a hobby so I stop talking about these damn salamanders. ;)

Salamander Care

Though it has only been a few days since I have gotten my two salamanders, I've already had to go through quite a bit of work to keep them feeling happy and healthy! The day after I made my last post I came home from work to find an unsettling sight. The smaller of the two salamanders had some strange, white fungus growing on its left hand and one of its gills! Of the two salamanders I brought home, this little guy was the one in the worst condition. Though he moved around healthily he was missing one toe on his right hand and two toes on his left, and he had a noticable red spot underneath his jaw. Seeing him develop fuzzies was obviously not a good sign! (Especially since the fungus on his hand was encasing where his two missing fingers were supposed to be!)

After some quick research I found that fungus on salamander larvae was not all that uncommon, especially around healing wounds. The cure was not too difficult either; the proper mixing of water and salt would help kill the infection and wouldn't hurt the little critter. I was a little skeptical that just salt would do the job, but I diligently mixed eight cups of water and two teaspoons of salt together into a nice saline mixture. (I technically wasn't supposed to use regular table salt but I figured it wouldn't be that big of a deal.)

After a half-hour bath in the mix, the little salamander came out with the fungus around his hand compeltely gone. The gill stuff was still there, however, so I gently wiped a wad of toilet paper against it. No luck. The wad of fungus did seem to go down, but there still was a lot of it there and it wasn't coming loose. So, I just put the little guy back in his aquarium, deciding to see how it looked the next day. But not a half hour later, the fungus had mysteriously dissapeared! I guess the salt really did kill it, and a little swimming around must have knocked it loose. So far there has been no sign of reoccuring fuzzies, and the little salamander seems even more active then before. :D Furthermore, the red spot underneath the little guy's jaw has been gradually shrinking, so I think he is healing up well. :)




In terms of eating, both of the salamanders have been doing well. I haven't seen the smaller one eat more then a couple little worm sections, but given his size that definitely would fill his belly. The larger of the two salamanders though... well, I think the fact that I keep calling him "fatty" about says it all. So far I've seen him stuff his face with two huge worm halves and six little worm pieces. It's actually quite ridiculous what he manages to shove inside his body. I swear the amount of worm that he has devoured equals more then he actually weighs, but sure enough he just keeps eating. What a fatty.

There is one thing I am a little worried about with these two. According to what I've read, salamander larvae like to have a lot of room to move around. (One suggestion was 10 gallons of space for every salamander you have!) But, given my current living conditions, it's just not possible to have more then the 1.5 gallon tank I have now. Furthermore, the amount of waste they produce in such a small space requires that I'll have to clean their cage once every few days or so. From what I've read on the internet, frequent handling and small spaces have a chance of stressing out the creatures, which makes them sickly and unhealthy and could possibly kill them. So far they seem just fine, but given how fast Fatty is growing (due to his enormous appetite I'm sure) I'm worried they might get stressed out and sick. I only hope that the two critters are strong enough to make it another month! Then I'll be able to get a nice big cage for them to move around in. :)

I still haven't decided on names for the two of them yet. I tossed around the idea of "Alpha" and "Omega" for a while, but even though "Omega" is like the most badass name ever "Alpha"... well, isn't. I'm still keeping those two names in mind but we'll see what else I can come up with. I defintely don't want the name "Fatty" to become permanent... maybe it could be a nickname though. :)

Tiger Salamanders

So, I wasn't planning it, but it seems that I have aquired a couple new pets! Two little baby tiger salamanders, to be exact! When they're little they have big tadpole tails, cute fuzzy gills, and tiny stubby legs. Eventually they mature into those black salamanders with big yellow spots that we are all familiar with. However, they are also known to grow up in their larval form, forever staying the little swimming critters that I have now. Basically, it's up to them! They live for about 10 years on average, and some have lived over 20; in either case they are easy to take care of whether they're swimming or crawling. I think they're really cute as they are right now, and will be just as cute if they decide to transform. :)

But how did I get these little guys? Well, the store that I work at has a bait shop among other things. And, I guess some people like to use baby salamanders as bait! I decided to buy a couple (at 60 cents each it was no big deal) and save them from their fate as fish food. I then of course had to go to Walmart and buy a little aquarium and some decorations, but after putting them inside they seemed to like it a lot! Assuming they survive my trip back home, I'm going to get a bigger tank and keep them with me over the school year.

So far neither of them have names, and I still don't have any good ideas. But I'm sure I'll think of something eventually (suggestions are always awesome though!) I guess tiger salamanders aren't too picky about their food, and so I've been putting worms into their tank and they've been eating them like crazy. Though the picture below is a little blurry, I even managed to get an action shot! Unfortunately the worm was too big for the little salamander's stomach, but once I split it in half one of the pieces mysteriously disapeared rather quickly. ;)

I'm going to try to take some better pictures as the little guys get settled. I never thought I'd have a pet quite like this one, but they are cute and energetic so I think they are perfect. :)

Now to name them! :D