agentnorth

[agentnorth]

hey guys!! so after eight years of waiting, i’ve finally got the chance to have a dog again! :D new pets are expensive, though, and since i’m on my final year of art school and living away from my family for the first time, money’s gonna be pretty tight for a while, so i figured i’d try to get past my crippling fear of the unknown and jump into the commissions rodeo for the new pupper’s sake.

(in case you were wondering, he’s a 1 ½ month old baby i found through a local group for independent rescuers, and i’m meeting him in person (dogson?) this week to take him to his first trip to the vet. his name is gonna be dogalini shepard :D)

if you don’t think you can afford a full commission but still would like to help, i’ve also set up a ko-fi! all donations will go to puppy’s college fund*, because apparently he’s gonna get really big and i haven’t found any sports scholarships available to large mystery breed doges. any help would be super appreciated, and rewarded with both a lifetime supply of dog pictures and a thank-you doodle of your choice <3

(* read: all the vaccines he has no idea he’s going to need to get, #rip baby’s trust in trips to the vet’s office. we’re not telling him that yet, though, shhh.)

sketches above $15 total and busts above $30 also get a free coloured sketch :)

if you have any questions or would like a commission, email me at [ aerie.bolt@gmail.com ] or gimme a holler through tumblr messaging. signal boosting is much appreciated <3

re: themes, i will draw:

OCs / fanart / RL people

simple mecha / armour

light NSFW (bit of blood, partial nudity, etc)

i will not draw

gore / non-con / etc

detailed armour / robots 

hard NSFW / fetish

anything harmful / offensive

[agentnorth]

wanted some paladins in winter outfits

pidge always ends up losing layers bc sweat

bonus allura who has no idea what winter means but rly loves leg warmers

[agentnorth]

80% of the Grimmons fic on AO3 was written by Tucker

[agentnorth]

[agentnorth]

ways i have tricked people into thinking i am competent:

bought a really nice looking fountain pen

that sounds like a joke but fountain pens are cheap as shit and when you use one people look at you like you’re a fucking wizard

this hero 901 cost me $3 on ebay and i don’t know why people assume that this is a pen for intelligent people but they do

it works better when i am using a nice notebook and not the avengers notebook that makes it look like the hulk is grabbing my sweet pen

i write in code which for some reason leads everyone to assume that i am some kind of da vinci motherfucker, instead of the reality, which is that i am writing about dicks and don’t want anyone to know

it looks like i am constantly taking notes on everything which is both intimidating and inaccurate, just the way i like it

i bought a usb clicker/laser pointer for $11 and now it seems like i’ve got this shit on lock, like i am so pro at giving presentations i even own accessories

holding a clicker makes you seem at least 10% more like you know what you’re talking about i’m pretty sure

i check the weekly freebies on creativemarket every monday so now i have a huge folder of pro-looking website themes and powerpoint templates and fill-in-the-blank resumes (also a lot of autumnal clipart and watercolor flowers and script fonts but that is less relevant)

i bought a ceramic coffee mug at world market years ago and it makes me look like a productive coffee-drinker because no one knows it’s full of hot cocoa

i don’t know why drinking coffee makes you look busy it just does even though i’m pretty sure it statistically reduces productivity

bonus: not only does no one know i’m just drinking Depression Chocolate but they think i am being Environmentally Conscious rather than Poor As Shit

extra bonus: i can take a sip whenever it looks like someone is going to ask a question and then they ask someone else

i almost never have to answer questions and i leave the room a lot because i have to pee constantly so double extra bonus

“That’s a very good question, and one that deserves an in-depth answer, so if you’d like to leave me your card I’d be happy to discuss it with you later one-on-one” aka “how DARE you suggest i waste everyone’s time answering this question right now” aka “lmfao i have no fucking clue what you just said please let me secretly google that okay”

bonus: now it seems like you are a sophisticated grownup who assumes everyone has A Card and if they have to settle for writing their email on a scrap of paper you can feel smug about it even though in your heart you know that you are no better

i’ve got anxiety and poor impulse control and anxiety about my poor impulse control so i generally say jack shit about shit and this constant silence is often misinterpreted as aloof observation

no one knows that my air of mystery is actually a bad case of the shy and i am too shy to correct them so it works out

when i’m on my laptop and i don’t want anyone to notice how much i’m dicking around i turn the brightness way down so they can’t snoop without being obvious

at least one window of notepad++ with some random html page or css stylesheet in it makes randos assume you are some kind of genius doing some genius shit, unless they are CS major randos, in which case i guess find an intimidating looking excel spreadsheet and hope for the best

[agentnorth]

[agentnorth]

Exquisite Textured Paintings by Justyna Kopania’s Capture Autumn’s Beauty

Polish artist Justyna Kopania has an uncanny talent of capturing the mood and heart of mother nature. 

Keep reading

[agentnorth]

An interesting long read in The Atlantic about the development of the Adlam script for the Fulani language, and what it means to be a digitally disadvantaged language: 

Fulani’s sounds were rendered imprecisely by the Arabic alphabet, the script most often used to write it; the Latin alphabet presented similar problems. Neither the Arabic nor the Latin alphabets could accurately spell Fulani words that require producing a “b” or a “d” sound while gulping in air, for example, so Fulani speakers had modified both alphabets with new symbols—often in inconsistent ways. […]

So, in 1990, the brothers started coming up with an alternative. Abdoulaye was 10 years old; Ibrahima was 14.

After school, they’d shut themselves in their rooms to draw, filling blank composition books they brought home from the classroom with the shapes that would make up their new alphabet. They’d take turns drawing letters, and together, assigned sounds to the shapes they came up with.

Six months later, they had a working script. Like Arabic, its 28 letters were written right to left. But unlike Arabic, whose short vowels are written as diacritical marks above and below letters, the script assigned its five vowels proper letters. It looked something like a cursive version of Ethiopic. Ibrahima and Abdoulaye’s parents started taking their project seriously, and invited one of their father’s relatives, who had an influential post in the local government, for a demonstration.

The visitor tested them: With Abdoulaye in the other room, Ibrahima would take dictation. When Abdoulaye returned, he read aloud what his brother had written. They switched and repeated the test. Over and over, the brothers consistently read out the right sounds, even those unique to Fulani. Crucially, they spelled the same complicated words in the same ways, independently of one another.

The visitor turned to their father. “Oh, yes, these kids are being serious,” he said. […]

“A script is not a biological entity,” said Kamal Mansour, a specialist in non-Latin typography at Monotype who represents the company on the Unicode Consortium. “It doesn’t live alone. It has to have acceptance from people.” […]

During the decade after that first big test in the brothers’ house, their new alphabet—yet unnamed—spread at an astounding rate. Eventually, it would come to be called Adlam, after its first four letters: the equivalents of a, d, l, and m. The word is also an acronym for a phrase that translates to “the alphabet that will save a people from disappearing.” […]

In between work and school, the brothers saved up enough to pay for the development of the first Adlam keyboard and font. They found a software company in Seattle that makes specialty fonts, and, in 2008, they were able to type in Adlam for the first time. It was a huge step, but it came with disappointment: Since Adlam was not yet supported by Unicode, if they sent a document written in Adlam to someone without the font installed, the recipient would see only a nonsensical jumble of random, disconnected Arabic letters. That’s when the importance of being included in Unicode sank in. […]

Abdoulaye and Ibrahima traveled to the 2014 meeting of the Unicode Technical Committee in Sunnyvale, California, to iron out the last kinks in their proposal. That same month, the committee voted to approve Adlam.

“I can’t even describe the feeling,” Abdoulaye said. He tried anyway: “When we got the email that we were officially encoded, we were very, very happy.”

Open up the settings on any smartphone and scroll through the keyboard options. If you’re holding an iPhone, you’ll find Macedonian and Telugu and Catalan—but not Adlam. The alphabet was included in Unicode 9.0, which was published this summer, but technology companies haven’t leapt at the chance to use it in apps and keyboards. […]

Instead of waiting for official support for Adlam to arrive, some Fulani speakers have gone ahead and created their own apps. Two Android apps already allow smartphone users to text each other in Adlam (as long as both have the “Adlam SMS” app installed) and learn the Adlam alphabet on their device. […]

Mansour, the Monotype designer, has been involved in type development for decades. He says it’s easy to forget how far things have come since the ’90s, when the internet was dominated almost entirely by the basic Latin alphabet.

“You couldn’t even type Baltic languages like Estonian or Lithuanian. You couldn’t! You had to buy an Eastern European supplement [software package],” Mansour said. “Now, nobody thinks of that. We collectively forget the stages of development that have happened. Now, you could even type Icelandic on an Arabic system, if you wanted.”

Read the whole thing.

[agentnorth]

i like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more. i like your body.  i like what it does, i like its hows.  i like to feel the spine of your body and its bones,and the trembling -firm-smooth ness and which i will again and again and again kiss, i like kissing this and that of you, i like, slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz of your electric furr,and what-is-it comes over parting flesh….And eyes big love-crumbs, and possibly i like the thrill of under me you so quite new

e e cummings, i like my body when it is with your

[agentnorth]

tim drake’s snapchat is 90% him making bruce wayne do normal middle-class american things and filming the results. popular youtube compilations include the one where they’re at denny’s at two in the morning and tim keeps trying to get bruce to order a moon over my hammy just so he’ll have to say it, the one where they’re at disneyworld and bruce gets increasingly frazzled culminating in him actually physically picking up gaston for reasons no one can entirely recall, and everyone’s favorite series “bruce wayne doesn’t understand walmart”

[agentnorth]

Look y’all, setting aside the fact that I can’t paint watercolours for shit, we need to talk about something – it being akisawana’s amazing Caboose/Carolina fic, Tiny Brands Incised. I haven’t been active in RvB fandom in ages, and even when I was I wasn’t much for reading other fic, but this – this is the good stuff, guys.

Keep reading

[agentnorth]

Remember Dr. Montgomery Montgomery from A Series of Unfortunate Events? The Baudelaires called him Uncle Monty. He was a herpetologist. Herpetology. Study of amphibians and reptiles like snakes. Pythons? Those are snakes. Uncle Monty. Studied snakes. Snakes like pythons. Monty Python.

[agentnorth]

If you're still taking icon requests, could I ask for anything with WfC Silverbolt or Jetfire? I promise I'd love them very much feed them and water them every day.

of course, dear sweet anon!! they’re all yours <3

[agentnorth]

whenever i think a lot about prowl im always like “damn.. wow.. dam… i love prowl” which i feel like is the opposite reaction any reasonable person has to thinking extensively about prowl

[agentnorth]

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

E. E. Cummings

[agentnorth]

when you have a teacher thats easily distracted and you dont wanna do any work

[agentnorth]

Playing Mass Effect 1 like, “No Kaidan, there’s nothing between Liara and me…also, there’s nothing between you and me.  I’m already in a relationship.  With Garrus.  He doesn’t know it yet…it’s a surprise.”