Thoughts of an Eaten Sun

In preparation of personal, and thought-provoking posts to come, I want to go over a few things.

John Colvin, a friend of mine, recently started a blog Some Cosmic Purpose. His motivation is to start a dialogue and I will eagerly participate in that. I have been searching for a purpose, a truth, what have you, as long as I have been thinking. Dialogue not only helps me see the way others think, but also helps me formulate my ideas.  As soon as I can get some time, I will write a reply to his My Formerly Vegan Cat post and write up another that deals with social websites. Shoot, now I’ve given it all away!

I am stubborn, but not hard headed. I do hold my beliefs strongly, but if I learn the way I am thinking is not correct, I’ll quickly change my view to a more correct version.  Not everyone will agree it is more correct, but that’s another topic in itself. This quickness to change is not me jumping on a bandwagon, but rather me refusing to hold on to dead ideas simply because I’ve held them for so long already. That sort of thinking goes on too often today, and I am determined to avoid that.

These posts, at the time you read them, are not necessarily reflective of my views at the time you read this. The longer ago the post, the more likely my views are to have changed.  I always encounter new information, process and re-process information, and come to new conclusions… updating my ideas all the while. Basically, if you think I’m dumb after reading a post, there’s a chance I am less dumb because time has elapsed since I wrote it. (NOTE: previous paragraph is from the part of me that doesn’t want anyone to dislike me.)

There may be cycles to my thoughts. I have noticed a cycle in some of my moods or thoughts regarding several things – religion in particular. Other times my views will be more a linear progression from one territory into another. Hell, there may be a trend toward progression with small cycles thrown in. It’s all about the big picture, and I hope I will be generally moving in the direction of truth. That’s a pretty big statement, right there, though. Begs the question, “What is truth?” And with that comes a slew of others. I’ve just opened a can of worms, but will not even attempt to close it here. I want those worms to have some air and room to wiggle around. Let them creep around your brain a bit and see what they shuffle, jumble or push around. I hope I just grossed you out. If I did, you’re probably a girl. Fact: Girls are squeamish. Fact: It’s fun to declare statements are facts, regardless of whether they are in fact facts.

My intentions are now declared; my disclaimer handed out. It is now time to venture into the murky world of thoughts. Again, I agree with John Colvin wholeheartedly in that I wish this to be a dialogue. If you read a post, I expect some sort of reply. Let me know what your thoughts are. Do you agree? Disagree? Don’t care at all? As long as you are providing some value (READ: constructive comments), I want your feedback!

Kyle Tolle Personal life, thoughts

Another doodle I did in my Greek Mythology class. This one has no inspiration other than what was in my head. The translation from paper to digital piece was pretty easy.  The figure is themed to be a band mascot. More specifically, a mascot for Fourth Mechanism (band of Zack Miller and I).  The name Brute Force Force is a play on an acronym.

As always, you can click on the image to view the details of  the full-size piece. And please leave me any constructive feedback you may have.

Heavy armed patron of the Brute Force Force.

The most challenging aspect was how to not leave him suspended in air. The base of his body is a bit like the bottom of a chess pawn, but I did not want a flat surface under him. The legs sticking out from the nodes are a decent compromise. Also, the thing coming from his back base is a wilting flower. I tried to make that clear with the shape and colors, but have gotten the impression that what it is is a bit unclear.

I find backgrounds to be hard in particular. There is no real scene, but it needs to be more than blank white. I may revisit that some time.  Another thing to revisit is the coloring. I’m still getting used to the brush choices. I also need to work on how to layer solid colors and create a vivid effect with them.

Kyle Tolle Artwork, Personal Brute Force Force, Fourth Mechanism

I recently re-watched The Dark Knight with a few friends. I have to say that Heath Ledger’s Joker is my favorite movie character. Ever. In light of this realization, I decided to take a picture of myself and “Jokerfy” it. The inspiration comes from the “I Believe in Harvey Dent” viral campaign which preceded the movie’s release.

This source image served as the main inspiration.

Here ais the image I decided to use. Just snapped it myself using my HTC Touch Pro’s 3.2Mp camera. That lighting was a pain to get right!

Just the base image of myself that I decided to Jokerfy.

My first attempt at Jokerfying myself was straight and simple. Took the original photo and overlaid my modifications. No changes to the base photo whatsoever.

First step in my Jokerfication.

Next, I decided to play with the base photo some. The stock photo gave a nice lighting contrast between the sides of my face, but I wanted to see if I could make it look like I was wearing some white makeup, as the Joker usually does. I played with the hue/saturation until I had removed a considerable about of the color… but not all of it. The tint keeps it from being black-and-white and adds a little more to it that way.

Second step in my Jokerfication was to make my face look painted.

I am pretty happy with that result, but wanted to try for something a little more odd or even darker. I decided to play with the Curves tool, since I haven’t done it a lot. I zapped a range of colors from the base picture. The effect is that it looks almost cartoonish. The effect makes it feel a bit more like Joker, in some respects.  I love the way it highlights only one side of my face, and the red mouth extends into the black. The eye also reminds me of the Eye of Sauron (from The Lord of the Rings, for you who are unfamiliar).  The left side of the image being essentially black also a gives the image an interesting offset. It has more character that way. I am very pleased with this last result.

This last Jokerfied image reminds me more than a bit of Sauron.

I usually refrain from interpreting or in-depth descriptions of photos, and even though a lot of these photos was happenstance, I had a goal in mind!  I hope you enjoy these and please let me know your thoughts.  Have you ever Jokerfied yourself? I’d love to see your results.

Kyle Tolle Artwork, Personal Joker, The Dark Knight

I like to doodle, and boring classes are no exception. Today, as I was in my Greek Myth class, I decided to do an adaptation of a creature from an image we looked at. The topic was Near Eastern Mythology (in order to compare to Greek myth) and I drew the creature Tiamat, which Marduk faces in the Enuma Elish. The name of this piece is silly, but I only care that I got something down.

Adaptation of a creature from a depiction of the Babylonian creation myth, Enuma Elish.

I’m interested in what you have to say! What’s your feedback?

Edit:

I found the image I used for reference. I have several links but the quality is a bit iffy on some. Not all are quite te same either.

Marduk  slays Tiamat

Small version of copy I used as reference.

Rough depiction

Cleaner depiction

Larger image, but slightly changed

Kyle Tolle Artwork, Personal Mythology

What does it mean to think?

I don’t know.  I will certainly not break into deep philosophical discussion right now.

My name is Kyle Tolle and I currently attend The Ohio State University.  My major is Computer & Information Science, so naturally I have an interest in computers.  I went the CIS route, instead of Computer Science & Engineering, because I find software more interesting than hardware.  I am also doing a Business minor, because I have an interest in running my own business.

A bit of background, perhaps?  I started developing simple, static web pages in 7th and 8th grade.  From then on, I have been fascinated with interactive web pages.  I set my heart on being a CGI programmer, even though I didn’t really know what that meant.  I looked more into some of the technologies available, and had ASP and PHP catch my attention.  I chose PHP over ASP for one simple reason; PHP is free.  Linux servers running PHP were cheaper than their Windows/ASP couterparts, and I wanted the cheapest solution since I was just learning.

I started off reading The Visual Quickstart Guide for PHP and fell in love.  Fell in love with what?  Creating something from nothing!  From there I picked up PHP and MySQL and started to create simple web apps with a database backend.  Another one of my hobbies is writing, so I wanted to create a website for authors.  A place where one could blog and post writings, as well as get feed back on those items.  Thus Scrawlpoint was born.

I worked on this throughout high school and into college.  Scrawlpoint went through several major redesigns and even more minor revisions.  It was basically a test bed for me to learn about different things.  It has a simple currency which can be used to buy things in the on-site store, a profile page, and a commenting system.  I built this all by hand and learned a lot while doing so.  I haven’t worked on it in quite a while, unfortunately.  School, internships and various other things have taken up a lot of my time.  I hope to return to it some day.  It is written largely in procedural PHP4 code, but I would love to overhaul it and extend it into some OO PHP5 (or 6 if it’s out by that time).

I have competed in Microsoft’s Imagine Cup, which was the first time I worked with C# or any Microsoft developer technology really.  The sort of problems I’ve encountered with desktop/console apps are a lot different from this in web apps. It takes some time getting used to the whole object-oriented and component-oriented design side of things. I advanced to the regional semi-finals in New Orleans, so Microsoft flew me and the other OSU kids down there.  That was pretty awesome, especially being the first time I’d flown.  I didn’t advance any further but I did have a lot of fun and learned a lot.

Since then I have done an internship at Avetec, which is a small-ish non-profit doing work in the area of jet engine simulation in order to reduce the immense costs of prototyping and speed up the time to production.  I have done some web programming for John Harder, a professor here at OSU.  The project was to develop a system for a grant he was working on, but the grant ended before it was put into production.  I do have a working demo, though it is not online right now.  I am currently working for Pete Gordon (blog) of Users First doing software development for Apneicare.

On my own, I have started nullSIX.  It’s a company for technology services, such as web design, applications, custom work, hosting, etc.  I had planned to launch it with a few friends, but that didn’t work out.  I decided to go ahead and start it alone and registered the name uh… somewhere within the past two years.  I can’t remember precisely.  I need to update the website, and hope to do that soon.  I did a website for the band New American Standard, but they have since migrated to a new site in order to integrate with a local organization.  I have also done an online portfolio for the photographer Greg Phipps.  I am currently reanalyzing the business goals for nullSIX, so we’ll see where it goes.  I am really interested in working on or creating some opensource software.

So that brings me to today and the future.  I am currently working on my second to last quarter here at OSU.  Last quarter I was interviewing all over the country, but finally settled on a specific position.  I’ll be working as a Software Engineer for Lockheed Martin in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  I am very excited about the location, the work, and to be done with undergrad!  Now, Lockheed does have tuition reimbursement, so I will probably end up going back for my masters at some point.

Things have really fallen into place quite nicely for me.  I have said for years that I want to live in Colorado, because it seems most suited to my tastes of mountains, and outdoors activities especially snowboarding!  I even got to go this past winter break to Telluride, Colorado to snowboard for a week and it was spectacular.  I will hopefully post pictures somewhere soon.

Now, back to this blog.  What will I use it for?  I plan to write on a lot of things, including:

• Software
• Software Development
• How-to guides and tutorials (some for family members to use)
• Technology
• Projects I undertake
• Thoughts on life in general
• Potentially many other things!

I am very excited to finally have my name as a domain and to start this blog!  My host is HostGator and they use cPanel.  I was quite surprised, and very happy, to see they have a program called Fantastico which allowed me to install this WordPress blog in about 30 seconds.  Now, I get to play around with the posts, themes, plugins, and loads of other things on here!

I hope to start my first How-to/Tutorial very soon, so I had better get motivated.

Kyle Tolle Personal history, Personal, Software